Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy recently announced that Sen. Tim Scott will be delivering the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress next Wednesday. Scott has served in the Senate since 2013 and previously represented South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives. He has played many leading roles in issues from improving education to workforce development to racial justice.
Sen. Scott announced he is “excited and honored for this opportunity to address the nation” but that he is looking forward to having an honest conversation with the American people and share his vision for addressing challenges and opportunities ahead. He will deliver remarks on policing reform efforts, as well as Republicans’ vision for expanding opportunity and empowering working families. One of his major police reform and anti-lynching proposals, the JUSTICE Act, was blocked by a filibuster from Senate Democrats in June 2020.
“Senator Tim Scott is not just one of the strongest leaders in our Senate Republican Conference. He is one of the most inspiring and unifying leaders in our nation. As Sen. Scott likes to say, he is living his mother’s American dream, and he has dedicated his career to creating more opportunities for our fellow citizens who need it most. Nobody is better at communicating why far-left policies fail working Americans,” Sen. McConnell said.
After the announcement that Sen. Scott will deliver the Republican address, The Washington Post decided to publish an extensive piece after researching his family history, which they titled “Tim Scott often talks about his grandfather and cotton. There’s more to that tale.”
They wanted to fact-check Sen. Scott to see if he actually went from “cotton to Congress” after talking about his grandfather, Artis Ware, who was forced out of elementary school to help on the farm and pick cotton. Sen. Scott often talks about the proof of opportunity in America, regardless of their skin color. But that message doesn’t make radical left media outlets too happy.
In a 1,800 word article, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote that Scott’s “cotton to Congress” line is missing some nuance, but did not award Scott any Pinocchios. He referred to an array of historians to unpack Scott’s family history and what was mentioned in his memoir. He wrote that Scott’s story was being “packaged for political consumption” and how his ancestors actually amassed large areas of farmland during the Great Depression, even when other Black farmers were forced out of business.
You can read the full article here.
The piece received mass amounts of criticism including Daily Wire reporter Cabot Phillips who summarized the story as “A white man telling a black man his ancestors weren’t ***actually*** that poor or oppressed.” He adds that if this story were about a Democrat, half of the Washington Post editorial board would’ve been forced to resign by now.
Former U.S Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley also criticized The Washington Post on Twitter and called the entire piece “shameful.” “When minorities refuse to be victims, disagree with liberal talking points, and think for ourselves, the media shames us and questions our credibility. It’s why we must fight harder for conservative values that lift us all up,” she wrote.
Isn’t the radical left narrative that minorities have it tougher no matter what? But since Sen. Scott is a Republican, all of the fairness and consideration doctrines don’t apply to him. The double standards continue.