Sen. Tim Scott, who grew up in working-class poverty to become South Carolina's first Black senator, and now the Senate's lone Black Republican, declared his candidacy for president on Monday, coming into the 2024 race with more cash on hand than all of his competitors -- and a story that he says embodies the American dream.
The 57-year-old senator held the official announcement event inside the Buccaneer Fieldhouse on Monday morning at his alma mater, Charleston Southern University, speaking enthusiastically in front of a backdrop of supporters, his name and campaign slogan, "Faith in America."
"We live in the land where it is possible for a kid raised in poverty by a single mother in a small apartment to one day serve in the People's House and maybe even the White House," Scott said, after speaking several minutes off the cuff.
"Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb," he continued. "And that is why I'm announcing today that I am running for president of the United States of America!"
"When I cut your taxes, they called me a prop. When I re-funded the police, they called me a token. When I pushed back on President Biden, they even called me the N-word," he said. "I disrupt their narrative. I threaten their control. The truth of my life disrupts their lies!"
Scott on Friday filed official paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to enter the race, setting into motion a $6 million ad-buy in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states of the Republican nominating contest, which will air starting Wednesday and run through the first GOP primary debate in late August.
Choosing to take on the current president as opposed to any primary opponents, Scott offered an outlook more positive than others to assert "America is not a nation in decline," but under President Joe Biden, he says, it has become "a nation in retreat."
"America is the city on the hill," Scott said in closing, walking off the stage to join standing supporters, as he tends to do on the stump. "I'm living proof that God and a good family and the United States of America can do all things if we believe. Will you believe it with me?"