Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) accused congressional Democrats of playing “race politics” when they largely rejected a police reform bill he drafted in the Senate on Wednesday.
Sen. Tim Scott said on Thursday that Congressional Democrats "don't want this president to have a victory on another serious issue confronting the minority communities." Scott said the move to block the GOP's police reform bill represented "pure, pure race politics at its worse." pic.twitter.com/ZFGwx2ffUo
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Scott told “Fox & Friends” in an interview on Thursday that Democrats did not believe Republicans would draft a bill that might suit them.
“I think they took a leap back because they don’t want this president to have a victory on another serious issue confronting the minority communities,” Scott told the “Fox & Friends” hosts. “This is pure, pure race politics at its worst.”
Scott also backed President Trump’s response to calls for police reform as “nearly perfect” in a Wednesday night interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity.
The GOP’s sole Black senator’s comments come after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to apologize for criticizing the proposal, which she said “does nothing” in legislating much-needed reforms to a system that has routinely discriminated against and brutalized Black people.
Scott’s proposal would incentivize police departments to make reforms in exchange for grant funding and would curtail but not ban the use of chokeholds, which was used in the police killing of George Floyd last month. It also would require data to be collected on police use of force and like the House bill, make lynching a federal hate crime.
House Democrats are expected to pass their own sweeping package of reforms on Thursday in a move that will likely land poorly with Senate Republicans who are not likely to make a deal after Democrats struck down Scott’s bill on Wednesday.
