The only black Republican in the U.S. Senate said Sunday that President Trump has regained some of his moral authority after last year lambasting the president over his equivocating statements on race following the deadly unrest in Charlottesville, Va.
“I think there are a number of steps that the president has taken to move us in a better direction,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said during an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
.@SenatorTimScott on whether @realDonaldTrump has regained his moral authority a year after #Charlottesville: I think there are a number of steps that the president has taken to move us in a better direction. pic.twitter.com/v8V7XbrbPX
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 12, 2018
Trump last August initially refused to condemn by name the neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups behind the Charlottesville rally, which became deadly when James Fields drove a car into a group of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Trump eventually called the groups “repugnant,” but appeared to walked back those comments during an impromptu press conference the following day.
“What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority,” Scott told Vice News at the time. “And that moral authority is compromised when [the press conference] happened. There’s no question about that.”
The president signed a resolution in September that condemned white nationalists and supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups.
Scott on Sunday cited opportunity zone legislation, White House outreach to African-American pastors and business leaders, as well as Trump administration policies aimed at reducing unemployment and recidivism in the black community, as examples of how the president had moved the country in a “better direction.”
He added that the Republican Party was still the party of former President Abraham Lincoln, despite being worried about racially-charged rhetoric on “both sides” of the political spectrum.
“I think we are going through some hard times, without any question,” Scott said. “There are strong signs from the White House to … both houses of Congress that we are making progress as the party of Lincoln. But the fact of the matter is that I’m more interested and more concerned with the progress of one nation and one American family than I am just the Republican Party.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., danced around the question of whether Trump was a racist.
“I do not know him. I have no idea about who he is as a person,” Kaine said during a separate interview on “Face the Nation.” “So whether it’s a sincere feeling, or whether he thinks it gets him some political edge or gain, I don’t know the answer. But I don’t know which of those two is worse.”
