Republican 2024 presidential candidate and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Tuesday that citizens should celebrate instead of cancel the nation's founding fathers for their wisdom in creating the system of government we have.
"We are blessed to live in the greatest nation on God's green earth," Scott said Tuesday in a video on his campaign site celebrating Independence Day. "Our founding fathers were geniuses who should be celebrated, not canceled."
The National Review reported in August 2022 that the University of Virginia's student newspaper called for the likeness and name of founder, and former President Thomas Jefferson, to be stripped from the school.
"Our physical environment — from statues to building names to Jefferson's overwhelming presence — exalts people who held the same beliefs as the repugnant white supremacists in attendance at the 'Unite the Right' rally," the student publication wrote at the time.
The report also mentioned a New Jersey School Board of Education that debated removing Jefferson's name from an elementary school because he owned slaves.
Scott, however, said in his video that he is proof that a Black man can rise above poverty and eventually become a United States Senator.
"Only in America, could the son of a single mother rise from poverty to become a candidate for president," he said. "America is the land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. I know it because I've lived it."
After a rough start in high school his freshman year failing four classes, Scott was able to get his grades back on track with the help of his mother and eventually graduated from Charleston Southern University, according to his official Senate biography.
He then started a successful small business and won a seat on his local Charleston County Council, then moving to the state legislature, and then the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in 2013.
Scott announced his 2024 GOP presidential bid in North Charleston, South Carolina, in May, according to the NPR report at the time.
"We need a president who persuades not just our friends and our base," NPR reported that he told supporters in his hometown. "We have to have a compassion for people who don't agree with us. We have to believe that our ideas are so strong and so powerful and so persuasive that we can actually take it to the highest points in the world and be successful, but we also have to be able to take it all the way down to places that today are hopeless and prove that who we are works for all Americans."
The political polling website FiveThirtyEight currently has Scott polling at 3.7%, far below Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 23.5%, and former President Donald Trump at 51.8%.
"America was born out of a revolution for freedom and opportunity," Scott posted on Twitter Tuesday. "In no other land would my story be possible. Today, and every day, I'm proud to be an American."
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