Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) sees more opportunity to convince black voters to vote for Donald Trump after the presumptive GOP presidential nominee became a convicted felon.
Scott, a possible vice presidential pick, echoed Trump’s belief that the New York conviction in his hush money case and other criminal trials will make the candidate more attractive to a key voting bloc typically dominated by Democrats.
“I honestly think this decision is helpful to driving even more folks to the Republican Party,” Scott told a group of reporters in Washington this week following Trump’s guilty verdict on 34 felonies. “African American men are fed up with this two-tiered justice system, so much so that I would suggest the number today is closer to 45% to 50% of African American men who are open” to the GOP.
Scott, the only black Republican senator and one of just five black GOP lawmakers in Congress, is using his platform after dropping out of the presidential race to turn out nonwhite voters for Trump. He plans to crisscross the country in the coming months to target voters in more than a half-dozen battleground states through a $14.3 million initiative funded by his Great Opportunity PAC.
“There was always an undercurrent of conservatism in the black community, obviously in the social and faith spaces that we felt the most,” said an aide assisting Scott, who declined to be named. “I don’t think anybody would ever say this about anything else, but Trump kind of gave a safe space for Republicans to enter and to talk about their platform with respect to conservatism and bringing more voters on board.”
Jobs, justice, and education are what Scott views as the key to wooing black voters.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, is setting off alarm bells for Democrats by hemorrhaging support among voters of color in recent polling. His campaign, with the help of Vice President Kamala Harris, recently began a black voter outreach initiative.
While the vast majority of black voters still back Biden, 77%, over Trump, 18%, according to recent Pew Research Center polling, the president is losing sizeable ground to his predecessor. Biden captured nearly 90% of the black vote in 2020.
Speaking at the Black Conservative Federation Gala in South Carolina earlier this year, which Scott attended, Trump made his case to black voters that they can better relate to him than Biden thanks to his four indictments.
“I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time, and a lot of people said that that’s why the black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” Trump said. “And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing.
“I think that’s why the black people are so much on my side now, because they see what’s happening to me happens to them. Does that make sense?” Trump continued. “My mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot. And you know who embraced it more than anybody else: the black population. It’s incredible.”
Trump and his allies in Congress have promised reinvigorated support in response to last week’s guilty verdict in the hush money trial.
Pressed on Trump’s racially charged rhetoric possibly undermining his courting of black voters, Scott tried to flip the script, saying it is Democrats taking voters for granted based on the color of their skin with “lip service” and failed economic promises.
Scott pointed to comments made by Biden as a senator in 1977 about not wanting his children to be in a “racial jungle” when speaking about desegregation. He also referenced when, in 2012, the then-vice president claimed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would put black people “back in chains.”
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“Comparatively speaking to President Trump, I’ll take that fight every day of the week,” Scott said.
“What has not been the case until recently is people actually taking a look at racism in the Democrat Party,” he continued. “A lot of black folks and minorities are moving towards the GOP because of the issues of jobs and justice.”
