Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said that former President Donald Trump had been more beneficial for minority communities than President Joe Biden, while dismissing the ongoing liberal outrage over his support for President Trump’s GOP nomination.
Following the endorsement, Mr. Scott became a target of criticism from liberal media. In a Jan. 24 interview with Fox, he was asked if he was expecting this treatment after the endorsement. “I was not. Here’s what I do expect. I expect the left to lose their minds because Donald Trump did more for minorities than Joe Biden will ever do. Think about the fact that Donald Trump put more money in historically black colleges and universities than any other president,” he said.
Under the Trump administration, poorer people saw better wage growth, the senator said. “The bottom 20 percent wage growth was higher than the top 20 percent.” In addition, “the lowest unemployment rate in the history of the country came first under Donald Trump.”
“You think about rare blood diseases like sickle cell anemia. Who helped champion that cause? Donald Trump.” Sickle cell anemia is a blood disorder that disproportionately affects the Black population in the United States.
“Think about the greatest anti-poverty program in the history of the country. Opportunity zones? Donald Trump,” he added.
Opportunity zones, created by the Trump administration in 2017, allowed wealthy investors to invest funds in regions identified as low-income or high-poverty while securing certain tax benefits.
A 2020 report by the Council of Economic Advisers under President Trump found that tax cuts in opportunity zones “spurred a large investment response.” They estimated that the program generated $75 billion in private capital by the end of 2019, “most of which would not have entered OZs without the incentive.”
The senator slammed liberals for the negative comments that came his way for endorsing President Trump. An MSNBC host accused Mr. Scott of supporting “easily the most racist president in our lifetime.” During a CNN program, an individual said: “I don’t know how he sleeps at night. I don’t know how he faces his friends and family.”
Talking about the hate he is receiving, Mr. Scott said that “the most bigoted comments I hear today come from liberals.”
“The racists that we should just turn our focus towards are teachers’ unions who trap poor black kids in cities like Chicago out of their greatest future because they refuse to let them go to good schools. I can’t imagine why the Democrats have not just said, ‘Dear people, I’m sorry, we resign. Love DNC.’ Truly, that’s the best thing they can do for the nation,” he said.
“And frankly, I am looking forward to bringing this race for Donald Trump to be our next president to my home state of South Carolina so the race can be over and we can focus on firing.”
Trump and Minorities
In a 2022 commentary piece for The Epoch Times, Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, called the accusation of President Trump being racist “one of the most outrageous slanders” against him.“The major impact that Trump had on minorities was through his policies. Few, if any modern presidents did more for economic advancement for blacks and Hispanics,” he wrote.
Between 2016 and 2019 under the Trump administration, black incomes “rose more than in any three years in the history of the United States,” he said, citing data from the Census Bureau. “The median household income for blacks rose to $45,438. There are few if any other major nations with a higher average income for blacks than the United States.”
“What about poverty? Black poverty rates fell to their lowest level ever recorded in 2019 and 2020. This bears repeating: The percentage of blacks who were poor in the United States was never lower than under Trump.”
The ethnic group that experienced the largest dollar income gains under the Trump administration was Asians, who, in 2020, had a higher household income than white people.
“The average Hispanic household makes more than $55,000 per year today. They are moving rapidly into the middle class. Poverty rates for Hispanics also hit an all-time low under Trump,” he wrote. “The jobless rates for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians fell to all-time lows as well.”
President Trump has strengthened his support base among minority communities for the upcoming election, according to a Jan. 11 poll from Tipp Insights.
According to the poll, President Trump has a “slender 1 percentage-point lead” over President Biden overall. However, an “even larger problem looms” for the Democrat candidate when it comes to minority votes.
“In 2020, according to a Roper Survey exit poll of voters, Biden took an estimated 87 percent of the black vote and 65 percent of the Hispanic vote running against Trump, who received an estimated 12 percent of the black vote and 32 percent of the Hispanic tally.”
“This time around might be a surprise for the Democrats” as the data shows “Trump getting a near-identical level of Hispanic support as in 2020, 31 percent, but Biden’s backing has plunged from more than 60 percent to just 53 percent”
President Trump was also found to have the backing of 23 percent of black voters, which is double the percentage from the last election.
