Sen. Tim Scott has been on the receiving end of death threats and racial slurs in recent days.
Scott revealed to his Republican colleagues at a luncheon this week that he has received various voicemails in which his life was threatened and that he was called “Uncle Tim,” the New York Times reported Tuesday. One message recommended that he “take your one-way ticket straight to hell,” while another caller said he wanted to put the only black Republican senator “in his crosshairs.” Other threats also mentioned Scott’s family.
“It’s interesting that we are on the right side of the police reform conversation, yet we’re on the wrong side according to the people, based on the way that we are characterized in the national press,” Scott told the newspaper after playing two of the calls he received.
The South Carolina Republican unveiled a police reform bill with members of his party last week, on which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture Monday. The bill comes in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis police custody.
Scott has been called a “token” member of the mostly white GOP Senate by social media users as well as an NBC reporter. Sen. Dick Durbin also dismissed the GOP police reform bill as a “token” approach.
“What we say on the Democratic side is we cannot waste this historic moment, this singular opportunity, let’s not do something that is a token, half-hearted approach,” he said on the Senate floor last week.
Scott hit back at the comment on Twitter.
“Y’all still wearing those kente cloths over there @SenatorDurbin?” Scott tweeted, referring to the traditional African sashes Democratic lawmakers, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, wore earlier in June in memory of Floyd.
Durbin later apologized for the comment.
“The minute Sen. Durbin heard that he had offended Sen. Scott, he sought him out on the floor and apologized,” Durbin’s communications director, Emily Hampsten, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
