U.S. Sen. Tim Scott Reads Racially Charged Hate Tweets During Sessions Speech

In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Tim Scott read off some of the hate tweets that he’s been receiving for endorsing Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.

In the run-up to the Sessions confirmation vote yesterday, Sen. Tim Scott provided a sample of the hate tweets that arrived because his is a black conservative voting for Sessions. Scott said that he’s been accused on social media of being an Uncle Tom, a white man in a black body, a disgrace to the black race, and a “house Negro.”

“I left out all the ones that used the N-word; I felt that would not be appropriate,” Scott added in the clip embedded below.

A former congressman representing South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the Charleston area, Republican Tim Scott was appointed to the Senate in January, 2013, by Gov. Nikki Haley (now U.N. ambassador) after incumbent Jim DeMint stepped down. Scott subsequently won a special election in November, 2014, to complete DeMint’s remaining two years, and then was re-elected in 2016. Not only is he the first African-American to represent South Carolina in the Senate, Tim Scott is also the first African-American to serve as a U.S Senator from the south since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

The Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General yesterday by a vote of 52 to 47. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat to vote in favor of Sessions. Although Sessions was accused of making racially insensitve remarks early in his career, which the now-former senator denied, he also prosecuted the Klan and played a role in desegregating Alabama schools.

“I’ve known Jeff Session for six years…If I had any one indication that he was bigoted or he was racist, I wouldn’t have voted for him. I didn’t see that,” Manchin told MSNBC, adding that many black citizens of Alabama testified on Capitol Hill in favor of Jeff Sessions.

Sessions was U.S. Attorney in Alabama from 1981 to 1993 and the state’s attorney general from 1994 until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 and subsequently re-elected three times. Unlike many of his GOP colleagues, Sessions endorsed President Trump early in the campaign.

In his speech, Tim Scott discussed the issue of tolerance, The Daily Caller explained.

“If you sign up to be a black conservative, the chances are very high you will be attacked. It comes with the territory, and I’ve had it for 20 years, two decades, but my friends and my staff, they’re not used to the level of animus that comes in from the liberal left that suggests that I somehow are not helpful to the cause of liberal America and therefore I am not helpful to black America…What I’m surprised by just a smidgen is that the liberal left that speaks and desires for all of us to be tolerant do not want to be tolerant of anyone that disagrees with where they are coming from…”

Scott also noted that his chief of staff is black, and the only other senator among the 100 lawmakers who has a black chief of staff is also a Republican.

There was a lot of publicity and social media hoopla afforded Sen. Elizabeth Warren when she was temporarily silenced for violating Senate rules for personally disparaging Sessions.

“Scott said he supported the move because of remarks Warren quoted from the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, but urged that each of his senators read Coretta Scott King’s letter, which Warren attempted to read from the floor,” The Hill reported.

“The NAACP has vigorously opposed Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions…Seven years earlier, however, the civil rights organization awarded Sessions its ‘Governmental Award of Excellence’ for his work in the Senate,” the Washington Free Beacon revealed.

Mrs. King opposed Sessions’ ultimately-failed nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986. According to the Washington Free Beacon, however, Mrs. King also publicly thanked Sessions in 2000 for securing the funding for Alabama’s Rosa Parks Library at Troy State University.

Before the vote on Sessions, Tim Scott “offered a personal and passionate defense of Sessions. He spoke of his personal experiences in introducing the Alabama Republican to African-American pastors at a racial forum in Charleston. And he read the statements of black Alabama Democrats vouching for Sessions, who as attorney general will be the nation’s top law enforcement official,” Fox News detailed.

Sen. Scott also vowed to hold Attorney General Sessions accountable “if and when we disagree.”

Sen. Cory Booker, who like fellow Democrat Warren, is believed to angling for a run for president in 2020, broke with tradition by testifying against the Jeff Sessions nomination. As The Daily Caller recalled, about a year ago, Booker and Sessions co-sponsored a Congressional Gold Medal award to participants in the historic 1965 Alabama Voting Rights March.

“I feel blessed and honored to have partnered with Sen. Sessions in being the Senate sponsors of this important award,” Booker said in February, 2016, at the awards ceremony.

[Featured Image by Rainier Ehrhardt/AP Images]