It is a risk to target the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction. That’s what the Washington Post did with its fact-check column on the rags-to-riches story of South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, titled, “Tim Scott often talks about his grandfather and cotton. There’s much more to the tale.”
Researching land records and Scott’s lineage in a farming family that acquired significant land in the post-Civil War South, the Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler concluded: “Scott tells a tidy story packaged for political consumption, but a close look shows how some of his family’s early and improbable success gets flattened and written out of his biography.”
Kessler withheld his signature Pinocchio rating system, acknowledging that “fact checks without a rating are not uncommon, especially when we delve into historical/family background questions like this.”
The piece was vilified. One writer called it “the most cringe-inducing thing I’ve seen in an American newspaper in many years.”
Erick Erickson of Red State wrote, “This is actually what racism of white elite often looks like.” Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called it “shameful.”
The Washington Post is hardly the first liberal media outlet to single out Scott for alleged “tokenism.”
Scott’s allies have said it’s a measure of Scott’s growing clout in the Republican Party, and his threat to a Democratic Party that is increasingly embracing racial identity politics, that he has become such a target.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy said, “He is frequently front and center in major policy debates in Washington. Tim Scott was one of three U.S. senators chosen to work on the tax reform legislation because he made himself an expert on the issue, not because he’s black.”
In the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Scott was appointed to be the Republican Party’s point man on police reform legislation. But the bill he authored fell short by a few votes. Democrats unanimously rejected it, even though Scott offered to include their amendments.
Scott, after the defeat of his police reform bill, in June 2020 said: “I know how it feels to walk into a store and have the little clerk follow me around even as the United States senator. I get that. I’ve experienced that. I understand the traffic stops. I understand that when I’m walking down the street and some young lady clutches on to her purse and my instinct is to get a little further away because I don’t want any issues with anybody. I understand that. But what I miss in this issue is that the stereotyping of Republicans is just as toxic and poisonous to the outcomes of the most vulnerable communities in this nation. That’s the issue.”
Suggesting that he is not above playing politics, on Sunday, the “Scott for Senate” campaign sent out a fundraising letter. It made no mention of the Washington Post piece, but it did make a plea to “help us prepare for the attacks from the left.”
The Washington Post’s fact-check piece appeared a day after news broke that Scott will deliver the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress this week. In response to a media inquiry, Kessler said the timing of the piece was coincidental.
