Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is unfortunately inching closer and closer toward a 2024 presidential bid. Scott, who is currently the only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, launched an exploratory committee on Wednesday (April 12).
This committee would allow him to raise money that could then be transferred to an official presidential campaign. The date he shared the news, he proclaimed in his “Faith in America” video, was the same date as the onset of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
This announcement came before planned treks to New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina for his tour of the same name. “I bear witness that America can do for anyone what she has done for me,” he says in the clip. “I will never back down in defense of the conservative values that make America exceptional.”
Scott has recently criticized Democrats and President Joe Biden for “living in the past” and getting voters addicted to “the drug of victimhood and the narcotic of despair.” He has also stated that systemic barriers aren’t a real thing. “Conservatism is my personal proof there is no ceiling in life,” Scott has remarked.
“I can go as high as my character, my education, and my perseverance will take me. I bear witness to that. I testify to that.” Scott, 57, is expected to make his candidacy official. If he does, the senator would join former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, former President Donald Trump, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and possibly Ron DeSantis as Republican frontrunners.
Even though Scott embodies diversity in the Senate, he will still uphold and perpetuate white supremacy that harms people of color if he runs for president. And as we’ve seen from Herschel Walker’s political career, white Republicans would enjoy nothing more.