Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., on Sunday cautioned President Donald Trump that some of his Twitter posts about rioting in the wake of the police-involved death of George Floyd were “not constructive.”
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Scott, the only African-American Republican in the Senate, said Trump was responsive to his advice, particularly regarding the tweet that evoked a 1967 call for aggressive action against protesters.
“We talked about the fact that there is a constructive way to have a dialogue with a nation in this similar fashion that we had a conversation after Charlottesville,” Scott said. “The president will listen, if you engage him with the facts of the issue.”
Scott added he told Trump about his Floyd tweets, that “those are not constructive tweets, without any question.”
“I'm thankful that we can have the conversation,” he said. “We don't always agree on any of his tweets beforehand, but we have the ability to sit down and dialogue on how we move this nation forward.”
Scott said he understands the anger that minorities feel toward law enforcement, but said that violence and destructive protests were counterproductive.
“There's too much abuse within law enforcement towards African American men,” he said. “I have been a victim seven times stopped in one year as an elected official, just driving while black.”
“Violence in the midst of this, these protests, simply takes away from the actual issue which is that George Floyd lost his life,” Scott said.
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