SC’s Tim Scott says ‘I plan to be the nominee,’ would sign 20-week fed abortion ban
South Carolina U.S. Sen. Tim Scott says he’s looking to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee but declined in a new interview to say whether he’d endorse Donald Trump should the former president be declared the primary winner.
In that same interview Wednesday with CBS News, South Carolina’s junior senator also declined to support a federal 15-week abortion ban proposed by his Republican colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham. In a later interview with New Hampshire station WMUR TV, Scott told a reporter he would support a federal abortion ban.
Scott, 57, announced the start of an exploratory committee Wednesday in a social media video, showing the Republican speaking from Fort Sumter where the Civil War started.
Launching an exploratory committee, which can raise money and conduct polls to see if a potential candidate has support for a potential run, is the latest in signs he plans to run.
“I see that America is starving for positive, optimistic leadership,” Scott said in the CBS News interview. “I want to provide that alternative.”
When asked whether he’d support Trump as the Republican nominee for president, Scott said, “I plan on being the nominee, obviously I have an exploratory committee moving forward.”
Although Scott would not say to CBS News whether he would support a federal law limiting abortions, such as a proposal by Graham to ban abortions at 15 weeks, he later told WMUR TV that he would sign a 20-week federal abortion ban into law as president.
South Carolina currently bans abortions at about 20 weeks of pregnancy after the state Supreme Court ruled a previous ban at six weeks was unconstitutional. The House and Senate have each this year passed abortionrestrictions — the House version bans abortions at conception, while the Senate bans the procedure at six weeks — though Republicans in each chamber have been unable to agree on how restrictive a ban should be.
“The fact that we are one of a handful of countries that allow late-term abortions is a challenging predicament for us to be in,” Scott said. “While the underlying issue (of abortion) is so incredibly important, how we solve that problem is by getting everyone to the table and having that conversation.”
Late-term abortions are extremely rare, typically done in cases where there is a maternal or fetal complications, according to a report from The Washington Post.
On President Joe Biden, Scott said that he’s been a poor leader, citing inflation as a key indicator of the president’s inability to lead.
“His leadership has imperiled single mothers like the one that raised me as well as senior citizens on fixed incomes,” Scott said.
In the 2024 Republican primary race, Scott starts off in single digits in national polls.
The latest Quinnipiac University Poll had Scott at 1% nationally among Republicans. In South Carolina, a new Winthrop University Poll showed Scott with 7% of the support among S.C. Republicans.
The poll, released Wednesday, also showed Scott with a 47% approval rating to 25% who disapprove among all South Carolinians. His approval rating is 69% among Republicans in the state.
“If we can unite this country around the solutions, focusing more on those solutions than anything else, it’s the only path forward and it’s the only one I’ve chosen,” Scott told CBS News.
This story was originally published April 13, 2023 at 10:24 AM with the headline "SC’s Tim Scott says ‘I plan to be the nominee,’ would sign 20-week fed abortion ban."
