Tim Scott Warns GOP Faces High-Stakes Senate Battles as 2026 Elections Near

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Guy Benson: With us now, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. He is NRSC chairman for the 2026 cycle, an important one with the elections looming in November. Senator, welcome back to the show.

Tim Scott: Hello, Guy. How are you?

Guy Benson: I’m very, very well. I’ve wanted to start, before we get into the individual races and some of the key battlegrounds across the map, because we have not spoken to you since the shocking and untimely passing of your colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham, also from South Carolina. His sister is now taking up the mantle and running for that open seat.

Just your reflections on Senator Graham, and tell us about Darlene–his sister–and how you’ve gotten to know her.

Tim Scott: Well, listen, Lindsey is irreplaceable, undeniably a powerful, strong voice, perhaps one of the strongest advocates with President Trump to keep America safe abroad. I love him as a colleague. He’s a brother from a different mother, but he’s too strong and firm on behalf of this great nation that we have.

I miss him to this day. We miss his humor. We miss his strength on foreign policy. Once again, he’s not replaceable.

Darlene Graham is a remarkable person with a very different focus. She is, to be honest with you, Guy, a little more conservative than Lindsey was. She focuses a ton of her time on kitchen-table economics. She goes to the grocery store. She understands the weight on the shoulders of breadwinners and folks trying to figure out how to make their way through this very difficult economic time.

She also understands how to stand up for the defenseless. You know, there’s the old Proverbs 31:8 that says, “Stand up for those who can’t stand for themselves.” Having run the agency for the disabled, she understands intimately how to stand in the gap, from a conservative perspective, for those who can’t do it for themselves.

So I’ve been really pleasantly surprised at her resiliency, her strength, her compassion, and certainly love her conservatism.

Guy Benson: All right, let’s talk about some of the races around the country. A couple of potential bright spots, potential pickup opportunities for the party: Michigan, with a solid nominee for the Republicans and, I think, a dangerous and extreme nominee for the Democrats, Abdul El-Sayed. I’ll have more to say about him later in the show.

And then, also, kind of out of nowhere, New Hampshire seems to be giving the Democrats some heartburn right now in that open seat. Both of those are open seats. Let’s start there and then get into some of the tougher sledding.

Tim Scott: Yes, certainly. Michigan is a wonderful opportunity for Mike Rogers to do what Dave McCormick did just a couple of years ago–to run two times in a row and be successful.

Why is it so important for Mike Rogers to be successful? A, he’s an incredible man who’s spent his entire adult life in public service. I’m talking about the FBI and carrying the badge, being able to keep Americans safe. He understands that intimately.

On the other side, we have one of the most dangerous, radical, and frankly weird candidates in American history, Abdul El-Sayed.

Here’s a person, Guy, who wants to abolish ICE. He wants to defund the police. He wants to make it much harder for the poorest communities, already rocked by economic uncertainty, to see a criminal element returning to their communities because he wants to open the prisons.

I mean, this is a guy so out of touch with Michigan that he literally says football is racist. I’m not sure about you, Guy. I’ve seen the NFL–two-thirds African American or better.

He also thinks that football is called football–

Guy Benson: There’s a couple Big Ten teams in that state.

Tim Scott: Yes, exactly. Michigan. I mean, I’m not necessarily going to celebrate the University of Michigan like I would my Carolina Gamecocks, as you would imagine, but they love their football in Michigan.

He also says, Guy, that football is toxic masculinity, but he wants boys playing girls in sports. You just can’t make this up.

And then, a family that has been consistently on the side of the terrorist, running around the country and celebrating Hasan Piker, the guy who said we deserve a 9/11–I can’t think of a worse candidate to represent any state in the United States. Maybe one in a foreign land, but certainly not one we need.

We need people who love America as we are, not as he wants to redesign us.

Then you turn your attention to Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. Here’s a congressman who’s never seen a tax increase he didn’t like. He wanted to raise taxes, Guy, on single moms like the one that raised me. He wanted to raise taxes on people earning tips, on people working overtime–hardworking, struggling Americans. He wanted to raise their taxes, and on our senior citizens on Social Security.

And on the other side, you have John James Nunez, who understands the state intimately, with a family legacy of public service and public sacrifice.

John James Nunez will be the next senator for the great state of New Hampshire, where they live free or they die.

But your listeners can go to DefendTheMajority.com to chip in just $5 to help us protect the majority, help our candidates win, and be the firewall for the United States of America, starting in the Senate.

Guy Benson: There’s a lot at stake in the Senate in particular. And I just talked about a couple of real opportunities, potentially, for pickups, and we’ll see. I think that there’s real hope in one or both of those races, but the winds are blowing the other direction overall.

We see it everywhere in the polling. We see very close Senate races, even with Republicans trailing in a bunch of states that Trump won in 2024, including by double digits in a number of them.

Susan Collins is a really tough out up in Maine, which is a blue state, but she’s got a big race on her hands.

If you can speak to the national environment briefly–we only have about two minutes left–and then also what this means, because I believe that if the Democrats, through a backlash election, win control of the Senate, anything that the president wants to do on personnel, anything, it’ll just be absolutely dead for the next two years, no matter how good or worthy the person or the idea might be.

Tim Scott: You said it better than anybody could say it. That’s why you’re on the radio all the time.

There’s no doubt that President Trump’s agenda is DOA–dead on arrival–and the only way to keep America’s hope alive, to keep the dream moving forward, is for us to win, baby, win.

And that means that we have to defeat candidates like James Tallarico, the sixth-gender, non-binary-believing James Tallarico, who thinks free markets and capitalism should be dead.

Guy Benson: He said it was racist white supremacy that needs to be dismantled.

Tim Scott: Yes, there you go, Guy. That’s why I said you’re the best who could say it.

You look at things like Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska. Razor-thin margins one way or the other.

I believe that winning in Iowa means Ashley Hinson continues to work hard for the people of the state. She certainly is a congresswoman who’s doing a fabulous job now. But on the other side, Tallarico–he literally hasn’t seen a tax increase he doesn’t like.

And then Alaska: We have our Dan Sullivan, but Mary Peltola, the Democrat running, is so afraid of Dan Sullivan that the real Dan Sullivan helped recruit another Dan Sullivan.

And that is just dirty politics.

Guy Benson: To confuse voters. They have a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot who’s calling himself a Republican, even though we know he’s a progressive.

So they’re pulling out all the stops for a reason. Even their moderates are flirting with things like court-packing.

Wake up if you’re on the right and engage, because this cycle you can’t just give up on it. You simply cannot. And there are some of those green shoots as well.

Senator Tim Scott, NRSC chairman and senator, thank you so much.