Exclusive — Tim Scott on Left’s ‘Culture of Grievance’: ‘I Destroy that Lie,’ Will Lift Americans Up with ‘Made in America Agenda’

NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told Breitbart News exclusively at his presidential campaign launch on Monday that his personal story eviscerates the leftist “lie” that “if you’re black or you’re brown, your future is grievance not greatness.” Scott also laid out his plans to lift up Americans who are struggling economically with a “Made in America Agenda” that he highlighted during his speech.

“I am the scariest proposition for the left: An African American conservative who has lived the American dream,” Scott said in an interview after his presidential campaign launch speech. “The truth of my life literally disproves their lies. Joe Biden and the radical left, they have literally attacked every single rung on the ladder that helped me climb. So, they create this culture of grievance where they tell kids today in schools all over America that if you’re black or you’re brown, your future is grievance not greatness. I destroy that lie. I didn’t come up with a silver spoon — just a plastic one. So having a chance to share how this country and a good family made this possible — if it can happen for me, it can happen for all of us. So my goal is to share the good news of America. That’s why we’re called Faith in America. We believe this country will afford everybody the opportunity.”

In his speech earlier, as he has done in public settings in the past including when he gave the GOP response to Democrat President Joe Biden’s 2021 address to a joint session of Congress, Scott hammered the Democrat claims that America is a racist country. He also laid out how Democrats and leftists have regularly attacked him with racist epithets over the years, but the reason why he believes they come after him on this front is because his personal story undercuts their narrative of victimhood.

Scott’s parents divorced when he was just seven years old, and his single mother worked around the clock to make ends meet and put food on the table in the small dirt-road house in which Scott shared not just a bedroom but a bed with his older brother. Scott’s family worked their way out of poverty — Scott descended from slaves a couple of generations earlier — and now Scott is in the U.S. Senate. Scott’s grandfather, who had to leave school in the third grade during the Jim Crow era in the South, lived long enough to see his grandson win a seat in Congress.

“My family went from cotton to Congress in his lifetime,” Scott said in his announcement speech.

WATCH: Sen. Tim Scott Announces Run for President of the United States

Tim Scott / YouTube

What Scott wants to do with his White House bid is show struggling Americans of all political stripes and all races and ethnicities that with the right policies and values, they too can make the improvements in life that Scott made in his life.

“I think you just put your finger on the artery, not the pulse, of the argument. It’s so important that you say that,” Scott told Breitbart News when asked about how his story connects with many Americans nationwide who are struggling to make ends meet. “The fact that about half of this nation — about 49 percent of the people in this country — don’t have a thousand dollars in their savings account. How do we fix that? We fix that by having a Made in America agenda that focuses on bringing jobs back to our country, re-shoring more of our jobs, and letting the free markets free from the regulatory burdens and high taxes that destroys and decimates jobs in rural America, in the Midwest, and in the Deep South. We can do that with my Made in America agenda. We’re talking about using this concept of an era of exponential innovation, using the resources we have in this country and research and development, to claim back our supply chain so we create high-paying jobs across this country. That’s how you get there. The median income in this country is $17.50 an hour — $34,900 a year. Can we do better? Absolutely. We’re going to start that.”

Scott told Breitbart News too that his economic vision for working-class Americans terrifies leftists because he would be effectively, upon its implementation, breaking the power structure they use to effectuate control over the public.

“When you say I believe the American people are better with the money in their pockets, when I cut their taxes and a single mother’s taxes go down by 73 percent and a dual income family goes down by 63 percent, what actually happens is they become the masters of their fate,” Scott said. “They become the captains of their ship. That scares the left because the far left believes in accumulating power and control so you can divide it equally amongst a few people is the path forward. We believe as conservatives and we know that the only path forward is when we return the resources to the people and let them make their choices and live their lives and deal with the consequences. That scares the far left. It sets us free.”