SC’s Haley strikes back at Obama for criticizing Republicans going soft on race issues
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Barack Obama “had eight years to pull our country together, but he chose to further divide us by race and gender,” in a heated response to the former president days after he drew Haley’s name into a discussion about Republicans and racial progress.
“You’d think the first black President of the United States would have hope and pride in America,” Haley wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday by The Daily Mail. “But Barack Obama didn’t say that. Instead, he criticized me for saying America isn’t racist.”
Speaking on a CNN podcast last week with political consultant David Axelrod, Obama said that Republicans, specifically minority or African American leaders, present racial progress and issues in a “can’t we just all get along” rhetoric.
Obama was asked about Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott’s discourse around racial progress in the U.S. Obama said he hadn’t listened to many of Scott’s speeches but that there has been “a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can all make it.’”
He then said Haley held a similar approach.
“’Look at me. I’m a Asian Indian-American woman. And my family came here and we worked hard,’” he said in the podcast, referencing Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump.
Obama went on to say he wasn’t trying to be “cynical” against Scott specifically, but that Scott is among Republicans who are Black or from minority backgrounds who consistently promote messages of getting along and living together without examining the historical and current racial inequalities that affect society today.
“There may come a time where there’s somebody in the Republican Party that is more serious about actually addressing some of the deep inequality that still exists in our society that tracks race and is a consequence of our racial history,” Obama said. “And if that happens, I think that would be fantastic. I haven’t yet seen it.”
The Hill reported that Scott responded in a statement Thursday saying, “Let us not forget we are a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. Democrats deny our progress to protect their power. The Left wants you to believe faith in America is a fraud and progress in our nation is a myth.”
Scott also said, “There’s no higher compliment than to be attacked by President Obama,” on Fox News Sunday.
This story was originally published June 22, 2023 at 5:30 AM.