![]() I don’t know it yet, but I’m pretty sure Mulvaney has already taken over my interviewing duties. "Take your pin off, would you, Congressman? You’re killing me," Mulvaney says. He immediately plunks down, apologizing for being held up by "the Occupiers" and loosening his flamboyant silk tie. He’s a drawling, quippy Southern prosecutor, a first-time elected politician who looks like a grown-up Draco Malfoy. Trey Gowdy, who represents the 4th district, upstate, arrives late. Somehow, the movie ’9 1/2 Weeks’ also came up. This Republican nomination process was over before it began, but that remark to the Post may have signaled the moment when Scott knew he was out: the moment, that is, he refused to be the racism denier he thought his presidential aspirations required.I sat down with them in DC’s Jaleo, a tapas bar, a day after the Fox-WSJ debate to talk shop about the pressure to endorse, South Carolina stereotypes, and whether or not Newt believes he’s smarter than the founding fathers. It’s telling, then, that he said what he said anyway. He had to have known - right? - that donors who didn’t want to give to him because he’s single surely wouldn’t be convinced to give to him after he accused them of having an issue with his race. “ You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack.” “It’s like a different form of discrimination or bias,” Scott told the newspaper. But he perceived something more sinister. No matter their income, no matter their disposition in life.”īut in the same way that Scott’s July 2016 Senate speech revealed his frustrations with racism, so did remarks he made to The Washington Post two months ago. The Post was writing about reports that wealthy GOP donors didn’t want to give to an unmarried candidate such as Scott. “But the vast majority of the time I was pulled over for driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood or something else just as trivial.” Most important, he said, “I do not know many African American men who do not have a very similar story to tell no matter their profession. “Was I speeding sometimes? Sure,” Scott said about his experience being pulled over seven times. But rather than deny racism’s existence, he was clear-eyed about what he’d observed and, given his party affiliation, rather brave. Scott was no less of a conservative then. “That is at least the third phone call that I have received from a supervisor or the chief of police since I have been in the Senate,” said Scott. for absolutely no reason other than driving a nice car.” And he told the story of a supervisor with the Capitol Police who called to apologize after an officer disregarded Scott’s congressional pin and demanded ID. He told the story of one of his staffers, a 30-year-old Black man, who was “pulled over so many times here in D.C. His brother, a command sergeant major in the Army, had been pulled over and accused of the same. ![]() Once he was accused of driving a stolen car. He told the story of how, in one year of life as an elected official, police had pulled him over seven times. Anthony, Minnesota, shot and killed Philando Castile, Scott gave a speech on the floor of the Senate. In July 2016, the week after a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot and killed Alton Sterling and a police officer in St.
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