Black MAGA Tim Scott enters the 2024 presidential race

Get the Point!

As long expected, yesterday, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) officially launched his bid for his party's nomination for President in 2024. Now that he is all in, what are his actual chances of winning the nomination?

Well, to put it kindly, they are about as good as a snowball's chance in Hell!

2024 Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott of South Carolina

Those slim chances are not because Scott lacks the intelligence or conservative credentials to lead his party; the former football player at Presbyterian College and honors graduate of Charleston Southern University earned a degree in political science before launching a successful career in insurance sales and for the last 10 years, by serving as the junior senator from the Palmetto State. 

No, Scott's chances are slim—just like every other Republican candidate not named Donald Trump—because as I often mention, the former president has a vise grip on the hearts and minds of openly bigoted Republican Primary voters that makes his third bid as the GOP presidential standard bearer practically inevitable. 

Now, you may have noticed that in the first four paragraphs of today's blog, that I didn't mention the proverbial "elephant" in the GOP room—which is that Scott is a Black man. While the Senator will never be mistaken for an unapologetic critic of white supremacy like Ol' Hobbs, to his credit, he has shown the ability to advocate for a few measures that positively impact(ed) the Black community such as greater HBCU funding, economic Opportunity Zones, and the First Step Act that helped former felons of all races to avoid recidivism and reentry into the federal prison system. 

But the problem for Scott is that he is a Black man running in a party that's filled with active racists and proud racist adjacent types—those timid souls in public who privately support openly racist candidates! Racist candidates, I remind, like Scott's self described good friend—former President Donald Trump!

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Hobbs, how can you call Trump a racist when he considers Black men like Sen. Tim Scott, Kanye West, and the recently deceased Jim Brown as his personal friends?" My simple response is that from plantation days to this very hour, racist masters and overseers during slavery, racist sharecrop land and company store owners during Jim Crow, and racists from all walks of life today have always had one or two Blacks that they used, liked, or both!

Back in the day, the “preferred” Black was one who was quick to kiss up to "Massa" or "Captain Boss" and help further their evil aims towards the masses of Black people. Today, it's the Black conservative cons who mockingly refer to the “Democratic Plantation”—all the while supporting Republican bigots who are steadily rolling back Black civil rights and the rights of other minority communities.

Did you know that Bryant's Grocery Store (above), the business that Roy and Carolyn Bryant operated and where Emmett Till, 14, was falsely accused of touching and whistling at Carolyn in 1955, catered to an all Black clientele of their sharecropper “neighbors?”When Till's grotesquely lynched body was discovered, the store soon went out of business due to the Bryant's Black customers boycotting the store…

To those white supremacist ends, Scott has willingly played his part, one that just about every prominent Black Republican (with the exception of Colin Powell) has played in the 21st Century as they have been unwilling to loudly call out the racist rhetoric and policies of their party's leaders—even as they get the occasional concession that benefits either themselves or some Black people. 

Tim Scott, the lone Black (MAGA) ranger, during a White House event circa 2017…

The question that begs asking is, as Scott entered the race with single digit polling numbers yesterday, the same as the majority of the Republican field, why did he choose to run? I strongly suspect that in the race for #1, Scott is actually running for #2—as in a bid to be Donald Trump's running mate in 2024! 

Trump and Scott circa 2020

With most of the prominent polls showing that Trump is ahead by a wide margin over the growing GOP primary field, even besting soon to be candidate Ron DeSantis (Florida's Governor) by as many as forty percentage points, it is clear that the more candidates who enter, like Scott and former NJ Governor Chris Christie, the more votes that are pulled away from DeSantis, a man whose rhetoric and discriminatory politics against Blacks and the LGBTQ community are just like Trump's—but far more frightening due to his proven ability to actually turn Florida into a mini-fascist state instead of talking big and doing little, like the former president. (Nota Bene: One area that Trump talked big and did bigger was in reforming the federal judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, one that has overturned Roe vs. Wade and soon to include multiple civil rights precedents that will make it easier for people to discriminate based on their personal biases).

While Trump isn't the sharpest political knife in the drawer, he is a natural public relations expert for his ideological kind, as shown in his social media post following Sen. Scott's announcement which read: "Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican Presidential Primary Race. It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable. I got Opportunity Zones done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful. Good luck Tim!”

Yep, you read it correctly—in one paragraph, Trump praises Scott, disses his former acolyte DeSantis—and seemingly offers an alternative for Republican voters who don't consider themselves MAGAs to vote against his fellow MAGA, DeSantis! 

What's crystal clear at this point is that Donald Trump already knows that he will be the nominee; if Tim Scott plays nicely in sandbox with Trump during the primary season, he very well could find himself on the ticket running for VP next summer. I definitely could see Trump tapping Scott as a way to help him with independent voters and disillusioned Democrats who are wary of the racism and race baiting during his term by saying, "see, I'm really not THAT racist—forget all that I said and wrote on Twitter and just look at my potential BLAAACCCKKK vice president."

More crucially, Scott may be willing to bend his back further and go along to get along with Trump with hopes that as a 57-year old man, that his own chance to be president could occur should his boss pass away in office if they win in 2024, or, as his term-limited successor in 2028.

Stay tuned...