Former President Barack Obama slammed presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., this week but Scott got the best of the back and forth.
David Axelrod interviewed Obama for CNN and asked the former president what he thought of Scott’s discussions of race. Obama answered:
“I think there’s a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can make it.’ Nikki Haley I think has a similar approach.
“I’m not being cynical about Tim Scott individually, but I am maybe suggesting the rhetoric of ‘Can’t we all get along, that has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present.”
Tim Scott fired back at Obama during an interview with Mark Levin.
Levin said: “When it comes to race, don’t you think Barack Obama missed a massive opportunity to pull the country together?
“To get people to accept each other for who they are instead of building into this group-ism?”
Scott said: “Mark, he missed a softball moving at slow speed with a big bat.
“You can’t miss this opportunity.
“America was hungry for bringing our country together, this coalition building where you can see Black kids and White kids and red ones and brown ones.
“As MLK spoke about, joining hands and singing with new meaning, ‘My country ‘tis of thee.’
“President Biden ran as the great uniter, and he has been the great divider.
“I have heard more negative things about people under his leadership than I have in a long time.
“I’ll tell you, the one thing the far left does not want a Black person to be in this country is a conservative.
“It is possible for Americans to come together not because of the color of our skin, but because of the consistency of our value system.”
Checked in last week with an old friend, @BarackObama, to talk about, among other things, the current state of democracy. And as you’d expect expect, he had lots of interesting stuff to say!
I hope you’ll download our #AxeFiles conversation, which will post tomorrow morning! pic.twitter.com/R0E0IU9t0p— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 14, 2023
My #AxeFiles conversation w/@BarackObama is up, including his very honest assessment below about how much his election, as the first Black POTUS, fueled the white populist backlash that propelled Trump.
Listen to the whole conversation.https://t.co/Y0MxrE66wC pic.twitter.com/c8f6J8WX4H— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 15, 2023
I wrote about my fellow labor reporter, Barack Obama https://t.co/vb4lm9Byda
— Alex Press (@alexnpress) June 15, 2023
