Sen. Tim Scott said Monday that Democratic presidential hopefuls like former Rep. Beto O’Rourke are trying to “dupe” black voters into believing President Trump is racist as a way to deflect from his accomplishments on uplifting the black and Hispanic communities.

During an appearance on Fox News’s “The Story,” Mr. Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, responded to comments Mr. O’Rourke recently made about America being “founded on racism” and how Mr. Trump’s election purportedly reawakened latent racism in the country. Mr. Scott said raising the specter of racism is all the Democrats have left because Republicans have been so successful in improving the lives of struggling Americans.

“This is an opportunity for the Democratic Party to try to figure out a way to dupe the African American voters, not only in South Carolina but around the country because they really have nothing but empty promises to run on,” Mr. Scott told Fox host Martha McCallum.

The South Carolina congressman pointed to Mr. Trump’s record on helping minorities, like criminal justice reform and record-low unemployment for blacks and Hispanics.

“If you were smart and a Democrat running for president you might want to focus on criminal justice ref— I’m sorry, actually we’ve already done that,” Mr. Scott said. “President Trump passed the best criminal justice reform that has had a disproportionately positive impact in the African-American communities, unlike the 1990s when Joe Biden and the Democratic Party locked up more folks in the Africa-American community than we’ve seen in a long time.

“If you were running for president as a Democrat, you’d probably want to talk about the economy, but oh wait, you can’t because President Trump has created more than 6 million jobs during his administration — 50% of those jobs have gone to African Americans and Hispanics,” he continued.

“You talk about empty promises because there is nothing left to try to reel in the African-American community because President Trump and the Republican Party has done a very good job of focusing on improving the economic outcome of people who have been struggling for the last decade under the previous administration,” Mr. Scott added.

His comments echo remarks he made last week when he declared the president is “not a racist” and that Democrats are overusing the race card because they have nothing else going for them.

“There’s no doubt that President Trump is not a racist,” the South Carolina senator said on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

“The facts are very simple that the same folks that voted for me voted for President Trump because President Trump made promises to the voters and he’s keeping the promises,” Mr. Scott said.

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