Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC): If We Don’t Unite as a Party, We Will Be Complicit in Joe Biden’s “Devastation”

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Senator from South Carolina and Republican Presidential Candidate, joined the Guy Benson Show to discuss a bevy of topics, of which includes Biden’s insane about face on the border and how the Biden administration is continuing to change their tune on border security and a potential border wall on the southern border of the United States. Scott and Guy also discussed the state of the 2024 GOP Presidential Primaries, and why Senator Tim Scott still has hope for his campaign in the face of a large Trump lead. Listen to the full interview below.

Full Interview:
https://static.foxnews.com/radio.foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/10/TIM-SCOTT-SMALL.mp3
Listen to the full podcast below:

Scott had this to say on the media misconstruing his words and calling him a racist:

“It’s not about progress. It’s about control. It’s not about motivating people. It’s about manipulating people. They’re not just targeting me… They’re saying to every single minority kid in any neighborhood, in any zip code. Don’t you dare think that the GOP has better answers in the Democrat Party. If you do anything like this, where are you going to shut you up, sit you down and puts you out of the community. “

Full Transcript:

GUY BENSON, FOX RADIO HOST: Welcome back to the program. Glad to have you here.

Also glad to welcome back U.S. Senator Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina, and he is a Republican candidate for the presidency in the 2024 cycle.

Senator, welcome back to the show.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Guy, it’s always good to be on air with you. Thanks for what you do, representing commonsense conservatism every day of the week.

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: Well, we love — thank you, and we love having you here on the airwaves.

I want to talk about immigration, something that you and I have discussed previously. You talk about it a lot on the campaign trail. It is a top issue, given what’s happened down at the Southern border for the last two-plus years.

It’s gotten so bad, Senator, that September was the worst month ever, statistically. And then, surprise, surprise, truly, Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, now trying to clear out the red tape to get some border wall construction going again, or at least some sort of border barrier.

Is this a significant development? What’s the lesson out of this desperate political move now from the Biden administration?

SCOTT: Guy, the lesson is a simple, clear lesson that says that it’s not the 70,000 Americans who’ve lost their lives because of fentanyl in the last 12 months.

It’s not the six million illegal crossings under the Biden lack of leadership. It’s, frankly, not even the 200 people on our national security watch list that have been caught at the Southern border. It is actually the blue state governors in the 2024 reelection that motivates him to do the right thing for the American people to close an insecure, unsafe, and wide-open border.

I cannot believe my eyes to hear Mayorkas taking up the cause of the conservative party and common sense. But when their elections and their power and their control are in jeopardy, they ring the bell and they round up the troops. It’s disgusting.

BENSON: Yes.

And when you look at — when you look at the crossings, you have got millions, around six million encounters. I think it was like 2.8 or so this year alone, 2.8 million. You add in the got-aways, and it’s seven, eight million illegal crossings just during this presidency.

And, as you point out, they didn’t care. They denied it. They pretended it wasn’t happening. They would put Band-Aids here or there. They would attack Border Patrol when it felt like it was going to help them politically.

And now, finally, it’s gotten bad enough, we’re getting close enough to the election, that, all of a sudden, oh, well, maybe walls work or barriers work after all, although, Senator, I am a little bit skeptical, because there’s a difference, as you know, between barriers and an actual serious wall.

It’s kind of unclear exactly what they’re planning to do. So, even this announcement should be viewed skeptically, shouldn’t it?

SCOTT: Well, Guy, you hit the nail on the head once again. That’s why I thank you for being a commonsense conservative telling the truth on the radio.

Here’s the truth. The truth is, you will hear more about building the wall than you will see construction material coming to the site to actually build the wall. My prediction is, you will have a lot of national media talking about the Biden administration’s decision to start constructing a physical barrier.

They won’t talk about, is it a smart wall with technology that captures the tunnels under the ground? Is it a smart wall that sees above the wall? No, they’re going to be talking about this administration responding to the concern and the crisis on the border, when, in fact, this administration sat paralyzed in their chairs watching the devastation of American family after American family

And, Guy, they’re just looking for headlines. And that is just devastating.

BENSON: They view the issue entirely through a political lens. Every single step of the way, whatever they’re doing, it’s politics.

I know that is a cynical take, but it’s an accurate one, based on more than two years of data thus far. So, I view this, again, with a jaundiced eye. I don’t trust them. I will believe it when I see it. We will see how they define barrier.

And then another interesting question this, before we move on, Senator, you have been in some of these funding battles in recent years back to the Trump administration. You had the Democrats on Capitol Hill absolutely willing to shut down the government in order to not build the border wall.

Joe Biden campaigned promising never to build one foot of border wall. I guess, if they’re at least trying to pretend that they’re changing their policy on this, will congressional Democrats and some of your colleagues magically decide that they are willing to fund this, after all, after defunding it and actually selling off the materials that had already been purchased to build it?

What’s going to happen there?

SCOTT: Political expediency.

One of the reasons why we only have the support of loved ones and cousins is because the fact is that the Democrats in Congress will only do what is in their political best interest. And, frankly, Guy, as a guy who’s been to the border twice — I was in Yuma, Arizona, about a month ago — here’s the devastation of sheriffs and law enforcement and hospitals and local services being overrun by people not from our country.

That devastation is measured in the loss of lives. That devastation is measured in the greatest time in human history for slavery. This time, it’s sex slavery and a humanitarian crisis. That devastation is measured in people who lose hope in their government.

And, as my prayer, as the next president of the United States, I would close our Southern border, not simply by finishing a smart wall and using available military-grade technology to surveil our Southern border, to slow down and then stop fentanyl, but I would go toe to toe with the Mexican cartels and stop them from killing Americans by freezing their assets, sanctioning their accounts, and using the full force of the presidency to stop the Mexican cartels in their tracks.

BENSON: Senator Tim Scott, at the recent Republican presidential debate, you made a number of different statements that you’re getting attacked for, unsurprisingly, by some in the media.

This always happens whenever you say something like America is not a racist country. You can see that we have dark chapters of our history, we have warts and flaws to this day, but, overall, you say we are not a racist country. And a lot of people on the left, including many journalists, disagree with you. They think we fundamentally are a racist country.

They get angry when you push back against that. You also made a point about the Great Society, government dependency. Here is a headline from The New Republic, which is a left-wing publication.

Quote: “Tim Scott suggests slavery wasn’t as bad as welfare for black Americans.”

Was that your point, Senator?

SCOTT: Well, Guy, that’s just a lie from the pit of hell.

Here’s what you should know, and I will say it again. I said it on show after show after show. I can’t think of anything worse in American history than slavery. There is not a redeeming quality in slavery.

But what I have suggested and then reinforced with the facts, that, in the 1950s, heading into the 1960s, black families were surviving poll taxes and literacy tests and discrimination being woven into the laws of our country back in the Jim Crow South.

But what we did not survive was welfare, was the Great Society, was the introduction of socialism. In the 1960s, Guy, 70 percent of black kids were growing up with two parents in the household. In the 2020s, 70 percent of black kids are growing up with one parent in the household.

What changed? What changed was, the war on poverty required the father to leave the house so checks would come in the mail. That’s not just true for black folks. It’s true for all Americans. But the absolute amplification is best seen through the prism of the devastation of LBJ’s Great Society on the poorest parts of the American family. That happened to be the black family.

So, when you want to see what’s coming to the rest of the country, you can look there first. And now we see 40 percent of working-class white families have their kids growing up in a single-parent household. Why? Because the Democrats and the radical left keep selling socialism and government handouts as the answer to what ails us.

And the rest of the country, we know hard work pays off. If you take out a loan, you pay it back. If you commit a violent crime, you go to jail. These are basic principles of the greatest nation on Earth. And, Guy, the more we do it, the better off we are.

And the more we deceive people that you can become a victim and we will bring it to you, that’s bad for the soul, the black soul, the white soul, the brown soul. It’s bad for the American soul.

BENSON: And when you make this kind of point and that kind of argument, the slings and arrows come your direction, one of which recently came from Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic congressman from New York.

And quickly, as an aside, Senator, have you ever mistaken a fire alarm for a door? Have you done that before?

(LAUGHTER)

SCOTT: You know, I don’t think he has either.

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: Fair point. Fair point.

So, he saw what you had to say, and he claimed that you were pandering to — quote — “the Sambo section” of the black community.

You had a pretty pointed response to that.

SCOTT: Yes, you know, here’s the fact. He’s not an idiot, but he is malicious.

Every single time Joe Biden and the liberal left find themselves on a — in a losing argument, you know what they do? They hide behind the race card. They will use race and class for one purpose, Guy, to hold on, to maintain their political power.

It’s not about progress. It’s about control. It’s not about motivating people, it’s about manipulating people. And I got to say, someone like that reminds me of the 1930s on plantations in the South, where you were silenced, silenced by the power of someone who didn’t care about you.

And, today, instead of using whips and physical intimidation, it’s words and emotional intimidation. And, Guy, here’s the worst part. Here’s the worst part of it all. They’re not just targeting me. They’re saying to every single minority kid in any neighborhood and any zip code, don’t you dare think that the GOP has better answers than the Democrat Party.

If you do anything like that, we’re going to shut you up, set you down and put you out of the community.

You cannot define being black by a political ideology. You should never define America by a socialist ideology. Both are wrong.

BENSON: Yes, well don’t tell that to Joe Biden, who famously said in the 2020 election, if you weren’t voting for him, then you ain’t black, same guy who said Mitt Romney wanted to put black people back in chains in 2012.

He says that kind of thing all the time. And that’s, like, an old white guy making those comments.

Senator, as we look ahead, January’s coming. Iowa is coming. A new poll out I saw today has former President Donald Trump now at 65 percent support in the national Republican primary for president. A lot of his supporters are pointing to numbers like that.

It’s like two-thirds, at least based on that poll, many others showing him in the majority of Republican voters. They say, look, it’s over. There’s no point to this. Why continue the charade of an election the primary side for Republicans?

You, of course, I would imagine, disagree with that, because you’re running for that office. But how do you deal with numbers like that? Those are very, very big numbers for the former president.

SCOTT: Well, Guy, I will tell you, in 2010, they said I had no chance of becoming a member of Congress. I was running in Charleston, where the Civil War started. I was running against Governor Carroll Campbell’s namesake son, Carroll Campbell III.

I was running against Strom Thurmond’s son. And they said, Tim, this is not your time. Sit down and just wait for another election cycle. I got in that race. And, against the odds, against the polls, I believed in the people who were voting and not the polls. And, at the end, we ended successfully 68-32, became a — becoming the Republican nominee and then the Republican congressman for the First Congressional District.

What I have to tell you is that, the more I travel, the more I know that running for the presidency of the United States is the most valuable work I can do, because we must restore hope, create opportunities and protect the America we all love.

And if we don’t start winning national elections, every single thing that Joe Biden has done is because we have not been able to win an election. We lost in 2020. We lost January 5, 2021. And, Guy, losing just one Senate seat in Georgia cost the American taxpayers $4 trillion.

And then we lost again in 2022. Our party needs a new leader. And I want to be that guy.

BENSON: Last, but not least, Senator Scott, you just invoked your time in the House of Representatives.

An interesting week in the House of Representatives. Do you have any advice to your Republican colleagues on that end of Capitol Hill about what to do now that Speaker McCarthy’s out?

SCOTT: Guy, simple advice. The road to socialism leads right through a divided Republican Party.

It is time for the House of Representatives, led by a very slim majority, to sing off the same page. If we do not, we will be complicit in the devastation brought to the American people by Joe Biden.

BENSON: U.S. Senator Tim Scott is running for president. He’s a South Carolinian.

Senator, always enjoy your time here. Hope to talk again soon.

SCOTT: Thank you, Guy. You all need to come back to Charleston.

BENSON: My parents were just there for the first time, and they loved it. They asked me to tell you that.

SCOTT: Awesome.

BENSON: Yes.

SCOTT: Don’t forget, go to VoteTimScott.com to make a contribution or join the team.

BENSON: All right, Senator Tim Scott on “The Guy Benson Show.”