Tim Scott Won’t Denounce Trump’s Birther Attack on Haley

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) had great things to say about the presidential candidate who nabbed his endorsement, Donald Trump—including standing by him as he lobbed conspiracies at the presidential candidate from his home state, Nikki Haley.

Scott, himself a former presidential candidate, explained his reasons for endorsing Trump on Sunday’s State of the Union, saying Trump provided “a stronger economy, a healthy military, and a safer world.” But when CNN moderator Dana Bash pressed Scott on Trump’s repeated insinuations that Haley was ineligible to be president, Scott tried to equivocate.

Bash brought up Trump’s false assertions that Haley was not born in the U.S., something he has suggested repeatedly on the campaign trail, and his repeated mocking of her first name, Nimarata, implicitly mocking her ethnicity. (Haley was born in South Carolina and has gone by her middle name Nikki for all her life.) “Are you comfortable with that kind of rhetoric from the...former president?” Bash asked.

Read more at The Daily Beast.