Sen. Tim Scott’s presidential campaign struggled mightily for months, in part because the South Carolina Republican seemed completely uninterested in trying to differentiate himself from Donald Trump. It led to ample speculation about the senator’s motivations: Perhaps, observers said, Scott was positioning himself for vice presidential consideration.
In the wake of his national candidacy, the GOP lawmaker has gone to even more outlandish lengths to stay in the former president’s good graces, to the point that Scott appeared to be humiliating himself in the hopes of impressing Trump.
A report in Time magazine this week helped highlight the context — and the hurdle standing in the South Carolinian’s way.
Republican Senator Tim Scott wants to be Donald Trump’s running mate. After Trump won the New Hampshire primary last week, Scott joined the former President onstage and professed his love for him. Trump was visibly flattered, but to get on the ticket, Scott will have to surmount an irredeemable MAGA World sin: He voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Yes, 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 five months ago, the senator said then-Vice President Mike Pence “absolutely“ did the right thing on Jan. 6.
As a result, as the report in Time magazine added, some of Trump’s “staunchest allies are mobilizing against Scott.” A source close to the former president was quoted saying, “Trump wants loyalty.” Of course, the insider didn’t mean loyalty to the rule of law or our constitutional system of government; they meant loyalty that would put Trump above any other considerations. That’s a dramatic thing to see: A prominent senator is likely to be excluded from vice presidential consideration because he’s not quite hostile enough to democracy. Time will tell who else is likely to be considered for the Trump-led ticket, though New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem appear to be in the mix. As this relates to Jan. 6, Noem was no longer in Congress after the 2020 election, Vance hadn’t yet been elected, and Stefanik voted with her far-right colleagues against certification.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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