Obama criticizes GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott for promoting racial unity

Former Democrat President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott exchanged words about one another during media appearances this week, with the former accusing the latter of not using enough racially divisive language in his campaign.

Scott has long advocated for racial unity, and slammed the notion of systemic racism pushed by the far left.

"I think there's 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 make it'," Obama told CNN's David Axelrod on Thursday, suggesting that presidential candidates were obligated to address racial disparities. 

"I'm not being cynical about Tim Scott individually," he continued, "but I am maybe suggesting the rhetoric of 'Can't we all get along' … has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present."

"When it comes to race, don't you think Barack Obama missed a massive opportunity to pull the country together?" Scott fired back in an interview with Mark Levin on Thursday. "To get people to accept each other for who they are instead of building into this group-ism?"

Scott said Obama "missed a softball moving at slow speed with a big bat" on the issue of racial unity, and lamented that the former president had failed despite the fact that "America was hungry for bringing our country together."

"Biden ran as the great uniter, and he has been the great divider," Scott continued, shifting his focus to the current president. "I have heard more negative things about people under his leadership than I have in a long time."

He suggested that, "the one thing the far left does not want a black person to be in this country is a conservative," noting that he believed it was "possible for Americans to come together not because of the color of our skin, but because of the consistency of our value system."