Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker took to Twitter Tuesday to respond to Hillary Clinton's campaign for criticizing comments he made about racial discord on the anniversary of the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, saying the Democratic front-runner's rhetoric “is the kind of thing that divides us."
The back-and-forth began when NBC News asked Walker about his plans for "restoring relations and building trust between the African American community and police,” as he took questions outside of a South Carolina restaurant Sunday.
The Republican presidential candidate began by saying “In general, if anyone focuses on racial discord we're going to get more of that and sadly we've seen that across the country under this administration. If we focus on unity, then I think we're going to get more of that. I think in South Carolina, folks know this particularly well.”
Walker then addressed the issue nationally, adding "We got to do more to strengthen families in this country.”
"We got to do more to make sure everyone can get access to great education,” Walker said. "We gotta do more to make sure that once people have a good education, that we do more for the private sector, to create jobs, so people have more opportunities."
Secretary Clinton’s South Carolina campaign director Clay Middleton fired back on Monday, releasing a statement saying “Scott Walker has a fundamental misunderstanding of the barriers African Americans face today."
"Scott Walker believes we should not focus on issues of racial justice while Hillary Clinton has been a fighter on these issues throughout her career,” Middleton said.
Responding to the campaign’s attack Tuesday, Walker tweeted the following:
The Tweet was signed “-SW” to signify that the tweet was from Walker. That was followed up a few minutes later with another social media message:
During last week’s republican debate, Governor Walker was asked whether he agreed overly aggressive police officers targeting young African Americans is the civil rights issue of our time.
Training is “the most important thing we can do when it comes to policing,” Walker said Thursday night, “particularly when it comes to the use of force.”
“And that we protect and stand up and support those men and women who are doing their jobs in law enforcement. And for the very few that don't, that there are consequences to show that we treat everyone the same here in America,” Walker concluded.
