Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott warns supporters that the radical left is spreading a “sinister” agenda on race.
Speaking at the New Beginnings Church in Chicago, Scott directed the blame toward progressives for exploiting race and class as a way to benefit the upper echelon.
“If the deck is permanently stacked against us, progressives would rather lower the bar for people of color than raise the bar on their own leadership,” he said.
“They say they want low-income Americans and people of color to rise, but their actions take us in the opposite direction. Their actions say they want us to sit down, shut up and don’t forget to vote as long as we’re voting blue. Instead of solutions we are offered distractions and division,” he continued.
Black leaders have criticized the South Carolina senator for his denial that racism and discrimination exist in the U.S. In the last GOP presidential debate, Scott received backlash for saying that America “overcame” slavery and that Black Americans’ worst experiences were with the “Great Society” under former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“I spend so much time denouncing, rebuking and debunking that the worst thing that happened to our country wasn’t slavery because it was,” Scott said. “Our country has made, however, tremendous strides since then on the issue of race, but lawlessness and fatherlessness and joblessness have gotten worse in the last 60 years.”
“I believe in the fact pattern that reveals that liberal elites dump money into a system that requires our fathers to leave the household in exchange for a check to come in the mail,” he added.
Although Scott gave the address from Chicago’s South Side, much of his message seemed to be geared toward more conventional Republican primary voters.
This comes as Scott is trailing behind former President Donald Trump in the primary polls. Trump is still the frontrunner in the GOP presidential nomination race, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in second.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy comes in a distant third. Haley comes in fourth, followed by former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, leaving Scott dead last.