Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) delivered a powerful and inspiringly diverse response to President Joe Biden's congressional address on Wednesday, causing professional journalists and other liberal ideologues to lose their minds.
Scott argued that Biden—a "good man" whose speech was "full of good words"—had failed to deliver on his promise to unite the country and "lower the temperature" after his victory in the 2020 election. "The Biden administration has pushed us apart," he said, praising the bipartisan COVID-19 relief legislation passed under former president Donald Trump and the success of Operation Warp Speed. The radical policies Democrats have proposed, he argued, were not intended to find "common ground."
Invoking his personal story of being raised in poverty by a single "prayin' momma," Scott challenged the lockdown policies backed by Democratic politicians that have closed down the institutions that aided his improbable rise, including schools and churches. He spoke of his experience as a black man in America and his struggle to be taken seriously by Democrats and their supporters.
"I get called 'Uncle Tom' and the N-word by progressives, by liberals," said Scott, who also called out the Washington Post for publishing a widely condemned fact check suggesting "my family's poverty was actually privilege." He challenged the prevailing corporate and cultural norms regarding issues of race, denouncing those who are "making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress at all."
In contrast to Biden's rambling tirade, Scott envisioned a "joyful springtime for our nation," where his illiterate grandfather "saw his family go from cotton to Congress in one lifetime." This was precisely the claim that Post chief fact checker Glenn Kessler, whose grandfather was a Dutch steel magnate, dinged for lacking "nuance."
Nuance was certainly lacking from the liberal response to Scott's speech. MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said the speech was "delivered from a planet where facts don't matter." Democratic analyst Jason Nichols, in a since-deleted tweet, called Scott a "clown" whose "ancestors are ashamed of him." At least one left-wing media personality had to apologize for "an ironic joke" using racially charged language. The term "Uncle Tim" was trending on Twitter.