South Carolina Senator. Tim Scottwho sat at a newscaster next to his four black Republican friends and congressional colleagues, confessed that his grandmother was a conservative.
“Maybe she never said the word conservative. She may never (have) voted conservative, but everything she taught me was conservative,” he said in his new YouTube series called “America’s Starting Five,” aimed at dissecting the narrative created by the five elected black Republicans in Congress against the black Republicans was spread.
The new series, featuring five-minute videos released weekly on Fridays, discusses “politics, race and the 2024 election” and seeks to reach Black voters who may be open to Republican ideas — amid speculation that Scott will be the choice of former President Donald Trump could be for vice president.
I asked Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, part of ‘America’s Starting Five’, whether the name of the series is a reference to basketball. “I think that it?” he laughed, before admitting that he doesn’t watch sports these days.
Owens said he loves the series because he thinks it gives Americans hope. “At the end of the day, the message is very simple: If I can do it, so can you,” he said.
Scott proposed the idea of filming the series to Owens months ago, eventually fitting it into everyone’s schedule, the Utah congressman said.
He noted the members of the panel – including Scott, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, Rep. John James of Michigan and Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas – represent a litany of backgrounds.
Hunt says in the second episode that he is a veteran, a husband, a father, an Apache pilot and a congressman, adding that the color of his skin – “and I’m black and I’m proud” – is at the bottom of the list comes after a dozen other aspects that define him. “Marginalizing who I am cheapens everything else I’ve ever done in my life,” Hunt said.
James interjected and said, “And what’s even more insulting is that we didn’t just show up here. It took 400 years of struggle and struggle. … You diminish the sacrifice of our ancestors when you put us in a box.”
During the episodes, the five members of Congress respond to viral media clips, such as one in which The View co-host Sunny Hostin says, “I feel like that’s an oxymoron, a Black Republican.”
Donalds acknowledged that the show’s perspectives are not representative of most people, while saying that Hostin and other left-wing individuals do not want people to think about their politics outside of their demographic or social status. Hunt added that “black excellence” is often associated with liberalism. “So that means what we did is completely excluded from history.”
At one point, Hunt went around the table and pointed out that the five members of Congress, including himself, had captured majority-white districts in states such as Utah, South Carolina, Florida and Texas.
“How do we get here?” Hunt said. “I think a lot of white people had to vote for us.” The lawmakers said they believe the country has evolved to judge people based on their character and values rather than the color of their skin. Right now, Congress is more racially diverse than ever before, with about 11% Black members.
Owens said in his interview with the Deseret News that while the five lawmakers may not agree on all issues, they share a respectful friendship and a common background “that is not slavery,” but “achievement.”
Their pitch to voters comes at a time when black voters, while still largely loyal to the Democratic Party, are reassessing their political preferences.
The 2016 exit polls showed that 8% of African Americans voted for Trump, and in 2020 this number increased to 12%. But a larger number of black voters say they are disappointed President Joe Biden straight away. According to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, about 30% of voters from this demographic group said they will definitely or probably support Trump in 2024.
The group parsed a comment Biden made during a 2020 interview with radio host Charlamagne tha God, in which the president insinuated that Black Americans who won’t vote for him “aren’t really black.”
“The good news is in 2024. It looks like four in 10 of us aren’t black enough for Joe Biden,” said Scott, who suspended his five-month presidential campaign in November, in the first episode.
During his campaign, he spoke openly about his identity, saying he was trying to “disrupt” the mainstream conversation about race.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb,” he said in his campaign launch speech last May.
“When I cut your taxes, they called me a pillar. When I paid the police back, they called me a token. When I pushed back on President Biden, they even called me the N-word,” he said. ‘I’m disrupting their story. I threaten their control. The truth of my life disrupts their lies!”
