Vice President Kamala Harris said she agrees with Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s assertion that America is not a racist country.
Harris spoke to CBS News on Thursday morning after President Joe Biden gave his first address to a joint session of Congress since taking office. Following Biden’s address, Scott was given the opportunity to respond and focused part of his speech on racism in America. Scott declared that “America is not a racist country,” prompting pushback and racist attacks from some activists.
CBS News played a clip of Scott’s comments and asked the vice president whether she agreed with this portion of his speech. Harris agreed with Scott and expanded to remind American’s of the country’s history.
“I believe that we need to — well, first of all, no, I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today,” Harris said. “And I applaud the president for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it.”
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Harris then brought the subject back to Biden’s address and asserted, as he did, that “one of the greatest threats to our national security is domestic terrorism, manifested by white supremacists.” Harris said these “are issues we must confront,” adding that it’s unhelpful “to ignore the realities of that.” (RELATED: ‘On The Move Again’ — Biden Focuses Joint Session Address On Jobs And Families)
“I think the president has been outstanding and a real national leader on the issue of saying, ‘let’s confront the realities and let’s deal with it knowing we all have so much more in common than what separates us ,'” Harries continued. “And the idea is that we want to unify the country but not without speaking truth and requiring accountability as appropriate.”
“Uncle Tim” began to trend on Twitter after the senator’s speech Wednesday evening, prompting the social media company to announce it would be blocking it from trending going forward. Twitter said it falls under its “policies on Trends” regarding promoting “healthy conversations” on the website.
Update from @Twitter, which says it is now blocking “Uncle Tim” from trending. https://t.co/3J4uJmmuXW pic.twitter.com/ICruBxHI5a
— Tobias Hoonhout (@TJHoonhout) April 29, 2021
Journalist Glenn Greenwald suggested the term trended “because white liberals now believe they’ve earned the right to smear political adversaries with racism and bigotry.” He pointed to Harris’s most recent comments, highlighting the fact that she agreed with Scott “for those people justifying” attacks on the senator.
Scott loosely addressed the comments against him on Fox & Friends Thursday morning. He appeared to take the same view as Harris, noting that “racism and discrimination are still real” while asserting that this is “a problem we can solve together.”
“Racism and discrimination, it’s still real, but it’s being pushed further and further into a smaller corner in our nation,” Scott explained after arguing that “the intolerance … often comes from the left.”
“That is great news,” he continued. “We should celebrate progress being made by black folks and white folks working together, by Hispanics and Asians coming together. If you want to be an American the door is wide open … come come in and add value to who we are, not to be part of destructive conversations that belittle individuals. I agree with the vice president on one thing: The internal struggle that we see in our nation, oftentimes led by the left is a problem, a problem we can solve together. The American family is bigger than that. We should act like it.”