By
Sen. Tim Scott hasn’t exactly been subtle about his national ambitions. After the South Carolina Republican’s presidential campaign was an expensive flop — Scott struggled to reach 5% in the polls, in part because he appeared terrified of differentiating himself from Donald Trump — the senator started embarrassing himself in the apparent hopes of joining the former president’s 2024 ticket.
There’s one important part of Scott’s résumé, however, that his intraparty critics seized on.
Time magazine reported a few months ago that the senator “will have to surmount an irredeemable MAGA World sin: He voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.”
He did, indeed. Just hours after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Senate voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Of the chamber’s 100 members, only eight far-right Republicans voted against certification — and Tim Scott wasn’t one of them.
What’s more, during a presidential primary debate last summer, the senator said then-Vice President Mike Pence “absolutely” did the right thing on Jan. 6. In case this isn’t obvious, that’s not Trump’s position.
With this in mind, what, pray tell, is the South Carolinian prepared to do about his partisan “problem”? As NBC News noted, Scott appears to have settled on the most unfortunate fix possible.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina on Sunday did not directly answer multiple questions about whether he’d accept the results of the 2024 presidential election, regardless of who wins. “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump,” Scott, a Republican, said the first time he was directly asked whether he would commit to accepting the election results on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Over and over again, host Kristen Welker pressed the Republican to simply say, “yes or no,” whether he was prepared to accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. He wouldn’t say — though Scott was willing to question the integrity of NBC News’ journalism for reasons unknown.
It’s worth pausing to appreciate the extraordinary circumstances we find ourselves in. Traditionally, high-profile senators weren’t even asked whether they were prepared to accept their own country’s election results, because the answer would’ve been clear.
But in 2024, as the radicalization of Republican politics intensifies, Scott wasn’t just asked, he also refused to answer — no doubt because the senator knew that if he answered in such a way that expressed support for democracy, this would’ve caused fury at Mar-a-Lago.
In other words, Scott believes the key to addressing his Team Trump “problem” is to appear more openly hostile toward the American political system, which in turn might boost his national ambitions.
As the GOP’s race to the bottom unfolds, I continue to believe that no one should want to be vice president this badly.