Criticism of Tom Cotton 2026 GOING BACK TO 2015 (Dick’s TC library).
9-28-26. Compiled by Dick Bennett
Code
Pink. Rev. of Cotton’s Book on China. 2026.
Andre Pagliarini. “Beyond Accountability. How Dictators and Nazis have eluded the
international justice system. . . .”
Sharon Zhang. “Senator
Says European Nations Must Sanction Trump and Rubio Before US Wrecks ICC.”
Jim Hightower. Tom Cotton Doublespeaker.
Cotton and NRA.
Andrew Harnik on Cotton the Cold Warrior.
Steve Benen. Cotton,
China Infiltrating, US not Racist Nation.
Slavery and 1619 Project.
Military Intervention
Tik-Tok
Iran
Facebook statement v. China
7 articles from google search.
Capitol Mobs.
Andrew de Millo. TC Running for President.
Charles Pierce. “TC’s Bottomless
Ambition.”
Arwa Mahdawi. “Think TC Is Bad?”
Jeet Heer. TC “…Could Unite the
Republican Party.”
Mahdi Hasan. “…TC May Be America’s Most
Dangerous Senator.”
Max Brantley. “Is TC the Next Donald
Trump?”
ACLU of Arkansas. “Senator Cotton’s
Racism….”
“Tom ‘Cancel Culture’ Cotton….”
Frank Lockwood. “Bill by Cotton Targets
Curriculum on Slavery.”
Cotton on the “China Virus”.
Prof. Hobson’s Reply.
Jake Johnson. “…Hawks Rejoice at Trump’s
Decision to Assassinate Iranian Military Leader….”
Maya Porter on Cotton’s advocacy of more incarceration.
Two Articles on Cotton Lying for Trump:
Amy Sorkin. “The trap of Lying for
Donald Trump.”
Jennifer Rubin. “Senators Cotton and
Perdue Are Outed for Lying on Trump’s Behalf.”
Charles Pierce. “What Tom Cotton Would
Mean for the CIA.”
Ad praising Cotton in NADG from Americans for Affordable Products.
Frank Lockwood. “Obama’s Choice for
Ambassador to Bahamas Blocked by Cotton.
David Orr. Cotton and GOP obstructionism.
Abel Tomlinson. “Tom Cotton and American
Fascism” (2015).
CRITICISM OF TOM COTTON: TEXTS 2026-2015
[This
anthology begins in 2026 with Code Pink’s review of Cotton’s pathological book
on China and ends in 2015 with Abel Tomlinson’s analysis of Cotton’s fascism.]
“CODE PINK
EXP0Sé: Tell HarperCollins: STOP DRIVING WAR!” Sept. 24, 2026.
[A NEGATIVE
REVIEW OF COTTON’S NEW SINOPHOBIC BOOK ENDORSING violence, imperial
aggression, and racialized fear. -D]
Dear Dick,
Last week, we targeted HarperCollins for
publishing genocide supporters like Heritage Foundation President
Kevin Roberts. This week, we are back at it.
In line with its history of uplifting pro-genocide
voices, HarperCollins also recently published Senator Tom Cotton’s
book titled Seven
Things You Can’t Say About China, in
which Cotton frames himself as a brave truth-teller who has come to save the
American populace from the “evil empire” of China. The book is a fevered
manifesto of anti-China hate, propping up a fraudulent American moral supremacy
in an effort to justify US military action against China. Cotton’s shallow
analyses are, in reality, a series of absurd, conspiratorial talking
points such as “China has invaded our society” and “China is coming for
our kids.” There's nothing intellectual about it.
Cotton starts the book by defending his widely
controversial accusations that COVID-19 was created in a lab as a
“deliberate” and “malevolent” attack on the world. He says he used “simple
common sense, not scientific knowledge or classified intelligence” to back his
claims, which isn’t the gloat he thinks it is.
He continues to write a strategically reductionist version
of China’s history that suits his narrative, and frames China’s rise as a sinister
plot to overthrow the American way of life. The book isn’t a challenge to
censorship (which is nonexistent when it comes to villainizing China) but a
terrifying portrait of the long-winded internal monologue of the US
empire’s attempt to create an enemy and justify war. HarperCollins, the
publisher, needs to be held accountable for giving a voice to a man whose
policy decisions are backed solely by racism and hate. Tell HarperCollins: Stop publishing hate and driving war!
The book is full of inconsistencies and hypocrisies, reflecting the Senator’s unapologetic
ignorance and pro-war attitudes. Cotton has been criticized in the past for calling
slavery a “necessary evil upon which the union was built” and denying
that there is systematic racism in the US criminal justice system
following the murder of George Floyd. He has voted against immigrant rights,
gay marriage, against acts that would help protect women from violence,
and against investigating COVID-19 hate crimes. He has called for
the invasion of the Hague, should Benjamin Netanyahu get arrested, for the
deployment of US troops to counter US protesters, and for more prisoners to go
to Guantanamo Bay to “rot in hell.” Additionally, Cotton has
taken millions of dollars from the Israeli lobby and continues to be an
unwavering voice of support for funding Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Tom Cotton takes every opportunity to promote authoritarianism
at home while accusing China of doing the same abroad. His book isn’t just
dangerous because of its blatant lying; it’s dangerous because it
contributes to a broader political environment that normalizes xenophobia,
fear-mongering, and war.
By publishing this book, HarperCollins is amplifying the voice
of a politician who has openly endorsed violence, imperial aggression,
and racialized fear. Cotton’s positions don’t represent honest
discourse or intellectual inquiry. They represent a calculated effort to push
the US into deeper hostility with China while silencing voices of peace,
cooperation, and truth.
Demand that HarperCollins take accountability for the pro-war,
pro-genocide voices it uplifts. The world doesn’t need another war, and it certainly
doesn’t need publishers fueling the fire with extremist propaganda disguised as
imperialist “truth-telling.” Tell Harper Collins: Stop giving a platform to pro-war,
racist politicians!
Peace and solidarity, Megan, Jodie, and the CODEPINK Team
COTTON v. INTERNATIONAL LAW
Andre Pagliarini. “Beyond
Accountability. How Dictators and Nazis
have eluded the international justice system—with help from their
friends.” The New Republic (Nov. 2025). On the struggle by the ICC to
uphold universal rights, opposed by Tom Cotton. “When the International Criminal Court issued
a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year
Senator Tom Cotton dismissed the ICC as a ‘kangaroo court’ with no standing to
bring charges. . . .Earlier this year the Trump White House sanctioned the ICC,
an act U.N. experts said ‘strikes at the very heart of the international
criminal justice system.’”
Sharon
Zhang. “Senator Says European
Nations Must Sanction Trump and Rubio Before US Wrecks ICC.” Truthout. Sen. Chris Van Hollen said that Trump and Rubio’s (and Cotton’s) attacks on the International
Criminal Court seek to obstruct investigations into Netanyahu.
“Would Someone Please Wake Up Sen. Tom
Cotton?”
Jim Hightower <jimhightower@substack.com> 11:05 AM (3 hours ago)
TOM COTTON DOUBLESPEAKER [Hightower exposed Cotton’s doubletalk, which I sent to the NCTE,
our major advocate of reading 1984, and
its President, Emily Kirkpatrick, responded with several important recent reports
of their work for honest language and argument.. - Dick ]
Kirkpatrick, Emily
Dear Dick,
I appreciate hearing from you! Thank you
for sharing this example. Picking up on your comment regarding publishing
doublespeak analysis, I think you will be pleased by a recent development. NCTE
will publish a new resource to be known as “The Year in Doublespeak. . . . .” Emily
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Suit
accuses NRA of illegally funding Trump; text claims NRA made ‘excessive,
unreported’ contributions to Sen. Tom Cotton, GOP candidates.
The Associated
Press Arkansas Democrat Read
more... MADDOWBLOG pat snyder 11-4-21.
Cott
Sen.
Tom Cotton, R-Ark., speaks
on Capitol Hill, on March 25, 2021. Andrew Harnik / Pool via
Reuters [Cotton’s New Cold War
fanaticism. –D]
Cotton
Finds Chinese Propaganda. May 27, 2021,
By Steve Benen.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is
apparently on the lookout for Chinese communist propaganda, and he finds it
with great regularity. Is the New York
Times publishing propaganda from Beijing? According to the Arkansas Republican, it certainly is. Are
Senate Democrats also helping push propaganda from China? To hear Cotton tell
it, they're guilty, too. This week, the GOP senator saw the imagined
problem reach the White House.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) claimed on
Tuesday that advocating for dismantling systemic racism is propaganda in
service to the Communist Party of China. On Tuesday afternoon, White House
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote, "On the anniversary of
George Floyd's murder, we reflect on the fact that dismantling systemic racism
is also a national security priority. The fight for racial justice at home and
abroad is foundational to our future [and] to how the world sees us."
At face value, Sullivan's statement
did not seem especially controversial. Dismantling systemic racism should
be "a national security priority." Fighting for racial
justice really is foundational to our international
credibility and moral standing.
But Tom Cotton apparently disapproved. "This tweet is approved by the
Communist Party of China," the Arkansas Republican tweeted minutes
later, in response to the White House national security advisor's brief
statement. It's a difficult sentiment
to parse, but I suspect the senator believes a domestic focus on systemic
racism paints the United States in an unflattering light, which in turn helps
the interests of our detractors abroad, including those in Beijing.
The problem, of course, is that if
this is what Cotton was getting at, he has it backwards. As historian Kevin Kruse explained yesterday,
in the not-too-distant past, Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and
John F. Kennedy each argued that the United States needed to address racial
injustices at home, not just to advance a moral cause, but also because
"communist powers -- like China -- were highlighting them in their
propaganda."
Quite right. The world takes note of
our domestic conflicts. George Floyd's murder sparked international protests
because much of the world recoiled at images, aired far and wide, of a police
officer who kept his knee on a Black man's neck. For countries like China,
eager to push the United States aside in the race for 21st-century primacy,
racial injustices are evidence against the American experiment.
Our rivals and enemies, in other
words, are eager to exploit our racial divisions. It's precisely why Jake
Sullivan's point on the anniversary of George Floyd's murder was axiomatically
true: the more we address systemic racism, the more it will improve, among
other things, our global stature and credibility.
The fact that Tom Cotton derided
such a sentiment says far more about him than the White House national security
advisor.
Capitol Mobs
Cotton holds to tweets on rioting by FRANK E.
LOCKWOODArkansas Democrat-Gazette
Jan 10, 2021. Capitol mobs deserve
same justice as summer mobs, he says.
Read more...
COTTON’S RUN FOR PRESIDENT 2024
Tom Cotton is already laying the groundwork in New
Hampshire for a 2024 presidential run. https://www.businessinsider.com/tom-cotton-laying-groundwork-2024-presidential-run-new-hampshire-2020-10. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas was in
New Hampshire on Monday, his second visit to campaign for down-ballot
Republicans in a state worth four electoral votes.The pair of
candidates Cotton stumped for remain relative long shots in their bids to
unseat Democratic incumbents in the House and the Senate. And Joe Biden, the
Democratic presidential nominee, leads President Donald Trump by an average of 11
points in the state. But
New Hampshire has an outsize influence as the first-in-the-nation primary
state, and Cotton was not subtle when asked about speculation that he will run
for president in 2024. "I expect I'll be back to New Hampshire again in
the future," Cotton told Insider.
·
Cotton's
messaging at the events and in interviews with Insider came down to a focus on
cultural issues like antifa and rioting in cities.
LONDONDERRY, New Hampshire —
Sitting cross-legged in front of a rifle display case and dressed for fall in
New England with a green fleece vest, Tom Cotton was waiting his turn to speak.
The 43-year-old Republican
senator from Arkansas has long been mentioned as a future
presidential contender, and here he was, testing the waters in the
first-in-the-nation primary state. Cotton
has grown louder on the national political stage in recent years. He has become omnipresent on Fox News,
embraced his own genre of trolling on Twitter, and demonstrated an attunement
to online culture wars and an ability to capitalize on them with his
controversial New York
Times op-ed article that led to the resignation
of the paper's editorial-page editor.
On the podcast circuit,
Cotton talks about reading Plato and Heidegger as a college student studying
the "great books," how he views Iran as one of the world's
most dangerous powers, how he disagrees with President Donald Trump's
withdrawal of American influence on the global stage, and how he was once a
pretty good high-school basketball player for the Dardanelle Sand Lizards.
Fleece-vest Tom Cotton,
however, has a much more pared-down message for Granite Staters. On Monday morning, Cotton made sure his face
mask was on for the lone camera rig — from WMUR, the only local TV news outlet
in New Hampshire — at a press conference he held with Matt Mowers, a Republican
congressional candidate. Inside the
local American Legion chapter in Londonderry, a wealthy suburb of Manchester,
his hefty double-tied blue mask rested around his neck as law-enforcement
officials across the table discussed the challenges of their profession
following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. . . .
Tom Cotton Is Campaigning Hard, Just Not for Re-Election
[This report contains lots of information about Cotton. –D]
Republican
Sen. Tom Cotton is on the ballot again six years after being elected in a
heated race, but this time his campaign's focus isn't on Arkansas. Associated
Press, Wire Service Content Oct. 26, 2020.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-10-26/tom-cotton-is-campaigning-hard-just-not-for-re-election?fbclid=IwAR1SwLRhLDP25kGm4jUDEUKEzpBXYTLA_0YTbePjy13LTfa5mC6ml3NaxtsTom
Cotton Is Campaigning Hard, Just Not for Re-Election FILE - In this Sept. 24, 2020 file photo, Sen. Tom Cotton,
R-Ark., listens during the Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs hearing in Washington. Six years after being elected in an expensive
and heated race, Sen. Cotton is on the ballot again in Arkansas and campaigning
hard — just not in his home state. (Drew Angerer/Pool via AP, File) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY ANDREW DEMILLO, Associated
Press LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) Six years
after being elected in an expensive and heated race, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton
is on the ballot again and he's campaigning hard — just not in Arkansas.
With no Democratic rival and millions in campaign funds to
spend, Cotton has run ads in the battleground states f Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. He's on the trail with
Senate colleagues like Kelly Loeffler in Georgia and Steve Daines in Montana, and made the rounds at events in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Cotton's moves show a barely concealed ambition: While his GOP
colleagues are struggling mightily to save their Senate seats, his schedule has
all the hallmarks of someone focused on the White House in 2024. His is one of
several shadow campaigns going on behind the din of the 2020 election battle,
and an example of a missed opportunity for Democrats who, even with President
Donald Trump motivating opposing voters, couldn't find a viable Senate
candidate to possibly take advantage.
Cotton insists his focus has been on helping fellow Republicans
and the president, not on any future plans. . . .“The campaigning I've been
doing this year across the country is laying the groundwork for a Republican
majority in the Senate and hopefully the president's re-election," Cotton
said. “I am always Arkansas' voice in the Senate, but I've got to tell you my
voice is much stronger if I have at least 49 other Republicans there with
me."
The only Democrat who announced a bid against Cotton abruptly
withdrew his candidacy hours after the filing deadline. His sole remaining
opponent is the Libertarian nominee, Ricky Dale Harrington, a 35-year-old
former prison chaplain who's never sought public office before.
State Democratic Party Chairman Michael John Gray said he
doesn't know if Cotton's race could have been a tossup like Lindsey Graham's
in South Carolina, where
Democratic opponent Jaime Harrison has shattered fundraising records. But, Gray says, “he certainly would have had
a real race on his hands."
Instead, Cotton's effort is barely perfunctory. His campaign had
about $6.5 million as of October 14. Aside from two TV spots he's run in
Arkansas, the lawmaker has run ads in battleground states targeting former Vice
President Joe Biden and echoing many of Trump's talking points.
For example, an ad Cotton aired in Minnesota showed images of
violence that occurred at some demonstrations over police brutality earlier
this year.
“The liberal mob is out of control," the ad says.
Cotton has also lent his support to a proposal going before
Arkansas voters that would impose new restrictions on ballot initiatives.
The incumbent lawmaker declined to participate in a debate on
Arkansas public television, which essentially gave Harrington an hour of
unfettered questions to himself.
“He's on Fox News — I don't know how many times a week, two,
three times a week? — but he can't come here to address the people of
Arkansas?" Harrington said during the program.
It's a far cry from 2014 when Cotton unseated Democratic
incumbent Mark Pryor in one of the most closely watched Senate battles that
year.
Cotton, 43, a Harvard law school graduate who served in the Army
in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the most aggressively conservative of the state's
top Republicans, especially when compared to Arkansas' other senator, the
soft-talking John Boozman. Since taking office, Cotton has eagerly taken on
national issues popular with the Republican base and hewed closely to Trump's
rhetoric.
He advocated the use of federal troops to quell nationwide
protests in a New York Times op-ed that sparked a backlash and
later l ed to the editorial page editor's resignation. He's called for
defunding any curriculum that's based on the newspaper's 1619 Project, which
centered on slavery's enduring role in American history.
Cotton is among several Republicans positioning themselves to be
the next standard-bearer for the party, no matter who wins on Nov. 3. The list
includes fellow senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz, neither of whom is up for
re-election this year.
With no Democrat on the ballot, Harrington is likely to pick up
Democratic voters like Heather Edmiston of Springdale, who has never voted for
a Libertarian.
“I don't feel like he’s going to win," she said, 'but I
don’t feel like it would hurt either."
While he's a Trump loyalist, Cotton and Trump have split on some
issues, including saying he would have urged the public to wear masks earlier
in the coronavirus pandemic.
“In retrospect, I wish the president might have turned his
marketing genius from his red MAGA hats to red MAGA masks," Cotton said.
Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo.
“Tom Cotton's
Bottomless Ambition Is Forcing the Rest of Us to Contemplate the Year 2024.”
The Arkansas senator heads to Iowa and New Hampshire four years
early. By
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34485380/tom-cotton-campaign-iowa-new-hampshire/ Oct 26, 2020
Senator Tom Cotton, the bobble-throated slapstick from Arkansas,
is running for re-election this year. His only opponent is a Libertarian Party
candidate, because a prospective Democratic challenger dropped out of the
race two hours after the
filing deadline, thereby blowing any chance to field a candidate that the
Arkansas Democratic Party had. (The candidate, Josh Mahony, cited "family
health reasons" for his precipitous withdrawal, which did not satisfy many people in
Arkansas who suspected oppo skulduggery.) So, deprived of an
actual race in Arkansas, Cotton has taken his medicine show on the road.
To Iowa.
And to New Hampshire.
From the AP, via the Sioux City Journal:
With no Democratic
rival and millions in campaign funds to spend, Cotton has run ads in the
battleground states of Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. He's on the
trail with Senate colleagues like Kelly Loeffler in Georgia and Steve Daines in
Montana, and made the rounds at events in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Cotton's moves
show a barely concealed ambition: While his GOP colleagues are struggling
mightily to save their Senate seats, his schedule has all the hallmarks of
someone focused on the White House in 2024. His is one of several shadow
campaigns going on behind the din of the 2020 election battle, and an example
of a missed opportunity for Democrats who, even with President Donald Trump
motivating opposing voters, couldn't find a viable Senate candidate to possibly
take advantage.
No, dammit. Too damn soon. It's especially too soon to start
thinking about people like Tom Cotton, who's so ambitious he makes Macbeth look
like an underachiever. This is a guy who wrote a letter to the mullahs in Iran,
undermining Barack Obama's foreign policy, when he was in the Senate for about
11 minutes. He's also quite in tune with current conservative culture-war
thinking, and he's with the program on voter suppression.
Aside from two TV
spots he's run in Arkansas, the lawmaker has run ads in battleground states
targeting former Vice President Joe Biden and echoing many of Trump's talking
points. For example, an ad Cotton aired in Minnesota showed images of violence
that occurred at some demonstrations over police brutality earlier this year.
“The liberal mob is out of control," the ad says. Cotton has also lent his
support to a proposal going before Arkansas voters that
would impose new restrictions on ballot initiatives.
He advocated the
use of federal troops to quell nationwide protests in a New York Times op-ed
that sparked a backlash and later led to the editorial page editor's resignation.
He's called for defunding any curriculum that's based on the newspaper's 1619
Project, which centered on slavery's enduring role in American history. Cotton
is among several Republicans positioning themselves to be the next standard-bearer
for the party, no matter who wins on Nov. 3. The list includes fellow senators
Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, neither of whom is up for
reelection this year.
Lord save us. Much too soon.
Tom Cotton Is Preparing to Be Trump 2.0. “The Arkansas
senator is a master of trolling the media and could unite the Republican Party.
That would make him much more dangerous than Trump” By Jeet
Heer. JUNE 5, 2020. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tom-cotton-trump-2-0/
Unlike some on the left, I never feared that Trump would be
the American Mussolini. As a self-absorbed reality-show star with minimal
understanding of how government works, Trump lacks sufficient organizational
ability. Nor does he have the work habits you need to run an authoritarian
government. My fear, going back to Trump’s candidacy in 2016, was that he
would be the Yankee Gabriele D’Annunzio, a prefiguration of things to come, an
inchoate and incoherent forerunner of the true American Duce who would one day
destroy the republic.
D’Annunzio,
a novelist and adventurer, ran the separatist government that ruled the city of Fiume in 1919–20. Although
short-lived, the Fiume escapade showed the vulnerability of the Italian
government, and provided a road map that the more ruthless Mussolini would
follow.
Trump
has performed a similar function for the United States, giving an X-ray scan
that makes all the weaknesses of the system evident. It’s not hard to imagine
that in the future a smarter and more policy-savvy demagogue could pick up
Trump’s political agenda but pursue it with all the discipline and
determination that Trump lacks.
There
are several plausible candidates for the role of Trump 2.0. One obvious name is
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who is telegenic and presents authoritarian
nationalism with a nimble fluidity Trump lacks. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley
has been working hard to at least sound like an economic populist, although he rarely
backs it up with policy. Still, his attacks on big tech do smartly link the
traditional cultural resentment of the American right with the left-wing fear
of corporate monopoly.
Another
senator strikes me as an even more likely Trump 2.0: Tom Cotton of Arkansas. A
graduate of Harvard Law and veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cotton
has an instinctive understanding of the wounded national pride that is at the
heart of Trumpism. Just as Ronald Reagan’s appeal partly came from the
promise he offered of recovering from the defeat of Vietnam, Trumpism is
haunted by the frustrating quagmires in the Middle East.
Cotton
is perhaps the most hawkish senator in America, but of a distinctly Trumpian
cast. He resorts to none of the lofty rhetoric of democracy that pervaded the
Bush administration. Instead, he knows the United States has been humiliated in
the Middle East and he wants revenge. Like some in the career military, he blames Iran for thwarting America’s agenda in
the region. This grudge fuels his constant efforts to wreak havoc on the
Islamic republic.
Some
Republicans defend Trump with a heavy heart. They may not like his actions or
what he stands for, but they know it is in their political interest to defend
their party’s leader. Not so with Cotton. He has become one of Trump’s
heartiest and most enthusiastic advocates in Washington, eagerly taking up the
main causes of Trumpism, like protectionism, immigration restriction, and a
more nationalist foreign policy. As Steve Bannon told The New Yorker in
2017, “Next to Trump, [Cotton is] the elected official who gets it the most—the
economic nationalism. Cotton was the one most supportive of us, up front and
behind the scenes, from the beginning. He understands that the Washington
elite—this permanent political class of both parties, between the K Street
consultants and politicians—needs to be shattered.”
Cotton,
Bannon shrewdly noted, knows how to be both an insider and an outsider. He has
cultivated a strong network of support among conservative institutions in
Washington, notably think tanks and neoconservative journalists. He’s done that
while cultivating ties with the more aggressively Trumpian right. Bannon asks,
“How many guys in town can give a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations
and also get kudos in the pages of Breitbart? The answer is, one guy.”
As
Robert Wright noted on his website Nonzero,
Cotton is especially well connected with the network around William Kristol and
the now-defunct magazine The
Weekly Standard.
Wright observes, “Cotton got elected to the Senate with the help of a million
dollars from Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel, subsequently hired
Kristol’s son Joseph as his legislative director, and has in various other ways
settled into a cozy symbiosis with Kristol’s network. The Washington Free
Beacon—whose founding editor is Matthew Continetti, Kristol’s
son-in-law—highlights Cotton’s exploits so regularly that any given page of its
Tom Cotton archives (say, this
year’s July-September page) will feature an array of headlines that
speak to the vast range of the senator’s expertise.”
If
Cotton ran in 2024 or 2028, he could heal many of the wounds within the
Republican Party by bringing back into the fold Never Trump neoconservatives.
This faction despises Trump for his vulgarity and disregard for policy, but
would be much more attracted to a figure like Cotton, a decorated veteran who
could unify the GOP with a nationalist message directed against China and
Iran.
The
neoconservatives are, of course, small in number. But, as an elite faction,
they play a crucial role in staffing Republican administrations. A President
Cotton would have a much easier time filling the government with loyal henchmen
than Trump has had. That alone could make Cotton immensely more effective at
achieving his policy goals than Trump has been.
The Weekly Standard connection helped Cotton with the
latest caper: publishing an op-ed in The New York Times on
Wednesday calling for the use of the American military to quell rioters against
police violence. The column was shepherded into print by Adam Rubenstein, a
25-year-old editor who previously worked at The Weekly Standard.
The
column caused extreme consternation among Times readers and staffers. A letter signed by nearly
500 New York Times employees explained,
If
Cotton’s call to arms is to be conveyed to our readers at all, it should be
subject to rigorous questioning and rebuttal of its shaky facts and gross
assumptions. For instance, Cotton writes that Antifa has “infiltrated protest
marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.” In fact, we
have reported that this is misinformation. Though Cotton claims protesters have
been primarily responsible for violence, our own reporting shows that in many
cities police have escalated violence. Other claims, like that the “riots were
carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich,” are not backed up by fact. At one
point, Cotton misquotes the U.S. Constitution.
The New York Times eventually apologized for publishing the column.
But that in itself is a victory for Cotton: He now gets to play the free-speech
martyr censored by the liberal media.
There’s
reason to suspect that embarrassing the Times was,
if not Cotton’s plan, certainly something he was pleased about. In 2006 while
serving in Iraq, Cotton wrote a letter to the Times calling for the prosecution of two Times reporters and an editor for publishing leaked
information about Al Qaeda. As Jeffrey Toobin noted in The New Yorker in 2017, “The letter combined
outrage, overstatement, and savvy politics in a manner that Trump would perfect
a decade later.”
Cotton
is certainly as demagogic as Trump, but he combines rabble-rousing with a
unique intelligence, one that is able to troll the liberal media at a high
level. If he’s the next Trump, America will be in trouble.
On Thursday night, Cotton tweeted, “I’m enjoying the @nytimes meltdown.”
Arwa Mahdawi. “Think
Trump is bad? President Tom Cotton would be even more terrifying.” The Guardian (6-9-20).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/09/think-donald-trump-is-bad-president-tom-cotton-would-be-even-more-terrifying
The Arkansas senator, who seems likely to run in 2024, is a
dangerous extremist who appeals to the Republican establishment and Trump’s
base
If you were going to write a novel about a
bigoted southern Republican senator eager to turn the US into a military
dictatorship, it would feel heavy-handed to name the protagonist Tom Cotton.
The only thing less subtle, perhaps, would be calling him Tommy Plantation.
But this is real life, I
am afraid, not a dystopian novel – and real life in 2020 does not seem
interested in subtlety. Nor does Cotton. The Arkansas senator attracted ire
last week for a column he wrote in the New
York Times urging that the military be brought in to deal with
protests against police brutality. “Send in the troops,” the headline bluntly
declared. “The nation must restore order,” it continued. Nothing says “land of
the free” like turning your troops on your own people.
Cotton wanted a coup and
he got one. After widespread criticism of
the article, including from Times journalists who argued it
endangered the safety of black employees, the paper issued an apology; James
Bennet, its editorial page editor, who had originally defended the decision to
publish, resigned.
The turmoil seems to have
played well for Cotton, who went on Fox News
on Sunday to criticise the paper for caving to the “woke child
mob” (which would make a great name for a punk band). According to a Washington
Post reporter, Cotton has “quintupled his
fundraising” since the fracas started. He has also garnered the public approval of Donald
Trump.
Cotton’s moment in the
spotlight has passed – but he will almost certainly be back there soon. Despite
having the charisma of a soggy bag of lettuce, the senator is hugely powerful:
Cotton has influenced many of Trump’s decisions, including cuts to legal immigration and the banning of commercial
flights between the US and China during the early days of Covid-19. He
is also the guy who told Trump it would be a great idea to buy Greenland. When not urging the
acquisition of the world’s largest island, Cotton can often be found fanning
the flames of racism and xenophobia. He has repeatedly used the phrases “China virus” and “Wuhan virus” and has floated the
conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was created by
the Chinese government in a weapons lab.
Cotton may look like an
American Alan Partridge, but he is no buffoon; he is a dangerous man with
dangerous ambitions. Indeed, a number of experts believe he is angling to
be the heir to Trumpism. His popularity among
conservative activists seems to have been boosted by the Times controversy and
it looks increasingly likely he will be a Republican presidential
contender in 2024.
The idea of a President
Cotton should terrify us all. Cotton has Trump’s appetite for
authoritarianism and a similar disdain for a free press – in 2006,
while serving in Iraq, Cotton wrote an open letter calling for the
prosecution of two Times reporters who had broken a story about a secret
government programme. He appeals to the Trump wing of the Republican party,
but, crucially, he also has strong ties with the establishment. “How many guys
in town can give a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations and also get
kudos in the pages of Breitbart?” Steve Bannon asked the New Yorker in 2017. “The answer is, one guy.”
That guy? Cotton.
We will eventually see the
end of Trump’s presidency, but it will be far harder to get rid of Trumpism.
The question is: how will Trump’s legacy evolve? Will it fade into the fringes
or take on a more serious, more sinister, facade? Trumpism is largely defined
by incompetence and farce, but Cotton could spin it into something a lot more
terrifying and even more tragic.
Mehdi Hasan. “ IN THE AGE OF TRUMP, TOM COTTON
MAY BE AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS SENATOR.”
The Republican senator has built credentials around the same worldview he had as a young man. Don’t be fooled.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/18/is-there-a-more-dangerous-member-of-congress-than-tom-cotton/
A RESHUFFLING OF President Trump’s
foreign policy apparatus, reported by The New York Times on Thursday, would see Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ushered out
the door, to be replaced by current director of the
CIA, Mike Pompeo.
That opening at the CIA would, in turn, be filled by Tom Cotton, a
Republican senator from Arkansas.
Is there a more dangerous member of Congress than Tom Cotton?
The hawkish Republican senator and former U.S. Army captain has never
hidden his relentless obsession with confronting Iran. He has led the charge on
Capitol Hill to dismantle the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic while
constantly banging the drum for tougher sanctions and even airstrikes against
Iranian nuclear facilities. With apologies to Winston Churchill, Cotton wants “war-war” not “jaw-jaw” — and he seems to have won over
the know-nothing president of the United States. Last week, President Donald
Trump refused to
certify to Congress that the Iran nuclear deal is in the U.S. national interest
and warned that U.S participation in that agreement could “be cancelled by me,
as president, at any time.”
You might call Cotton, who is now being touted as the next
director of the CIA, the “Trump whisperer.” In fact, according to the Weekly Standard, in a recent meeting with his top national
security and foreign policy advisers, “having failed to receive the
decertification option from his own team, Trump called Senator Tom Cotton and
put him on speakerphone. The president asked Cotton to make the case for
decertifying the Iran deal. Cotton took five minutes and walked Trump and his
team through the case, emphasizing one point in particular: re-certifying the
deal would be declaring that it was in the national security interest of the
United States, something Cotton understood that Trump didn’t believe.”
The Weekly Standard report added that Trump “left the phone call”
convinced that the decision to decertify was “the right one.”
Got that? The reality TV star who now occupies the Oval Office defied the
advice of his own inner circle, including Defense Secretary James Mattis; ignored the pleas of America’s
closest allies; and dismissed the evidence offered by the International Atomic Energy Agency that
Iran is in compliance with the terms of the deal. Instead, he decided to go
with the advice of a 40-year-old freshman senator from Arkansas, who has zero
expertise in Middle East diplomacy and none in the field of nuclear
proliferation.
If Cotton’s service in Iraq is being held up as evidence of his
patriotism, then all to the good. But patrolling dangerous neighborhoods in
Baghdad is not the equivalent of a training in foreign policy, just as serving
as a deckhand on a ship isn’t much of an education in ship building. And it
can’t be said that by living hard realities Cotton was drawn to his
ultra-conservative politics. No, he’s been an outspoken conservative since he arrived on Harvard’s college campus. Cotton gives the impression of
the type of right-wing student who loved little more than to debate and enrage
liberals, arming himself with as many factoids as possible to embarrass his
hapless opponent. He started as a young man with the view of the world he has
today and built credentials around it. Don’t be fooled.
Lest we forget, this is the same Cotton who was accused of “treachery” and “mutiny” after
penning a 2015 “open letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in which he asked them
effectively to ignore the foreign policy of the president of the United States,
because the next one might undo it. “The next president could revoke such an
executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify
the terms of the agreement at any time,” he warned.
This is the same Cotton who compared the Iran nuclear negotiations to
the “appeasement” of Nazi Germany in the 1930s;
the same Cotton who shot to prominence in conservative circles after writing
a letter to
the New York Times from Iraq in 2006, calling for three of the paper’s
journalists to be put “behind bars” for their coverage of a secret Bush
administration program (one of those reporters, James Risen, is now a colleague of mine at The Intercept); the
same Cotton who once said his only objection to Guantánamo Bay was that “there are too many empty beds”; the same Cotton who claims to
enjoy eating birthday cake every day of the week. (OK, admittedly, this last
point is not relevant to his knee-jerk hawkishness, but it’s still worth
noting. What kind of maniac eats birthday cake every single day?)
IN MANY WAYS, Cotton is the GOP foreign policy
equivalent of House Speaker Paul Ryan: disingenuous, ignorant, and out of his
depth, yet feted by the D.C. press corps as a Very Serious Person — a resume
and a vocabulary as a substitute for seriousness.
There is, however, nothing serious about him — despite his two degrees from Harvard. Like Ryan, Cotton’s policy ideas fall apart the minute they are applied
to the real world. “The policy of the United States should be regime change in
Iran,” Cotton declared in
June, before explaining how he believed the United States should “support
internal domestic dissent” in Iran by backing minority ethnic groups, including
Arabs, Turkmen, and Baloches, who “aren’t enthusiastic about living in a
Persian Shia despotism.”
This is madness. Have we forgotten how much blood was spilled in
Iraq thanks to such a nakedly sectarian “divide and rule” strategy? Are we supposed to ignore the way in which outside powers
stirred up “internal domestic dissent” in Syria, by arming and funding vicious jihadist groups?
Then again, though Cotton may now be the most hawkish senator in the
United States — step aside John McCain and Lindsey Graham — we should perhaps
thank him for his bluntness. Remember: Every time former President Barack Obama
or a member of his administration framed the argument over the nuclear deal as
a choice between diplomacy or war, Republicans would cry foul. This, they would
say, was a false choice; critics of the deal merely wanted a better deal.
But Cotton is clear about regime change. He is clear about airstrikes. He
is clear about wanting to crush Iran. Consider his recent remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations where, referring to the impact
of sanctions on Iran’s economy, Cotton said: “One thing I learned in the Army
is that when your opponent is on his knees, you drive him to the ground and
choke him out,” later adding, “If they’re on their knees in surrender, then you
accept their surrender.”
This is the kind of language you might expect from a tinpot African
dictator trying to suppress a domestic revolt — or maybe from a teenager
obsessed with playing “Call of Duty” on his Playstation — and not from a
leading member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The idea that Iran is about to “surrender” to the United States anytime
soon is laughable. Equally absurd is Cotton’s claim that “calibrated strikes”
against the Islamic Republic, modeled on Bill Clinton’s Operation Desert
Fox four-day
bombing of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1998, would put a halt to the Iranian
nuclear program. “If we are forced to take action,” the senator told his
audience at the CFR, “the United States has the ability to totally destroy
Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.”
This is next-level stupidity. First, a preemptive strike on Iranian
nuclear facilities would, in the words of former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, “guarantee that which we are trying
to prevent – an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that
would build it in secret.”
Second, it is impossible to “destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure”
without invading and occupying the country, and rounding up and executing every
single scientist working on the nuclear program.
Third, Iran in 2017 is not Iraq in 1998. Why wouldn’t the Iranians retaliate against
U.S. interests, both in the region and beyond? How many U.S. lives is Cotton
willing to sacrifice?
Perhaps the former U.S. Army captain and (maybe) future director of the
CIA should have a quiet word with an actual expert:
retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who, as head of CENTCOM,
organized Operation Desert Fox. Speaking about the potential fallout from a
similar set of airstrikes against Iran, back in 2009, Zinni asked the
following questions:
After you’ve dropped those bombs on those hardened facilities, what
happens next? What happens if they decide, in their hardened shelters with
their mobile missiles, to start launching those? What happens if they launch
them into U.S. bases on the other side of the Gulf? What happens if they launch
into Israel, or somewhere else? Into a Saudi oil field? Into Ras Laffan, with
all the natural gas? What happens if they now flush their fast patrol boats,
their cruise missiles … and they sink a tanker, an oil tanker? And of course,
the economy of the world goes absolutely nuts. What happens if they activate
sleeper cells? The MOIS, the intelligence service — what happens if another
preemptive attack by the West, the U.S., and Israel, they fire up the streets
and now we got problems. Just tell me how to deal with all that, OK?
Zinni concluded his remarks with a stark warning to hawks like Cotton,
who seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing: “Like I tell my friends, if you like Iraq and
Afghanistan, you’ll love Iran.”
“Is Tom Cotton the next Donald Trump? Racists and fascists
should applaud.” BY Max Brantley (June 9, 2020). https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2020/06/09/is-tom-cotton-the-next-donald-trump
Sen.
Tom Cotton is
making significant strides in positioning himself as the racists’ and
authoritarians’ candidate of choice when Donald Trump moves
on. His op-ed triumph over the
evil New York Times has propelled him into a bright
national spotlight. He made fools of the hated Fake News outlet. It got better.
They fired the man who gave him a platform for a call to use the military to
stomp (or worse, given the military meaning of “no quarter”) demonstrators for
racial justice.
Continued:
https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2020/06/09/is-tom-cotton-the-next-donald-trump
Senator Cotton's racism is showing
ACLU
of Arkansas 9-9-20
Friends –
Unfortunately, Arkansans are no strangers to
Senator Tom Cotton's blatant disregard for our Constitutional rights. But his
latest plan is simply racist and cruel.
Senator Cotton announced his intention to
introduce a bill with a clear attempt to suppress one of our oldest and most
cherished traditions: the right to protest injustice and make our voices heard.
Specifically, this bill would deny coronavirus-related unemployment funds to
people convicted of federal offenses during a protest.
If Senator Cotton is so worried about
protestors, why were there no calls for harsh crackdowns when white
supremacists marched on Charlottesville or when armed protesters took over a
wildlife refuge in Oregon? By advancing this bill, calling protesters "thugs,"
and threatening protesters with military force, Senator Cotton has reminded us
what systemic racism looks like, and why all of us must continue to work to
combat anti-Black racism in all its forms. And he is setting a tone for state
and local politicians to follow suit. Politicians should never incite violence
or retaliation against protesters.
Contact Senator Cotton's office now and tell him to support all
Arkansans' right to protest.
Dissent is – and always has been – patriotic,
and we will continue to stand with all those demanding justice and an end to
the scourge of police violence against Black communities once and for all.
Thank you,
ACLU of Arkansas
|
“Tom ‘Cancel Culture’ Cotton draws ACLU fire for
anti-protest legislation.”
|
Do they get colder than callous Tom
Cotton? 9-3-20
|
|
“Bill by Cotton targets curriculum on slavery.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (26 July 2020). By FRANK E. LOCKWOOD.
WASHINGTON — A New
York Times-based school curriculum emphasizing American slavery instead of
American independence has been targeted by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton.
The Little Rock
Republican introduced legislation Thursday that would prevent the use of
federal tax dollars to spread the historical reinterpretation in the nation’s
classrooms.
While labeling 1776 as
the nation’s “official birth date,” the 1619 Project seeks “to reframe
American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our
nation’s birth year.”
Timed to coincide with
the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves in the Virginia colony,
the 1619 Project was launched last year by the Times.
Arguing that it is
“finally time to tell our story truthfully,” the project “aims to reframe the
country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions
of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”
The project’s
mastermind, Nikole Hannah-Jones, was awarded this year’s Pulitzer
Prize for commentary.
A curriculum based on
the project, which includes essays, poems, photographs and short fiction by a
variety of contributors, was also created.
The result of a
partnership between the Times and the nonprofit Pulitzer Center, the curriculum
is intended for use in primary and secondary schools nationwide.
If the Saving American
History Act of 2020 becomes law, however, school districts using the 1619
Project curriculum could face financial consequences. [According to a google search, the bill
failed, and the Act never became law. –Dick
9-28, 2026.]
Cotton’s legislation
labels the project “a distortion of American history.”
“The 1619 Project is
leftwing propaganda. It’s revisionist history at its worst,” he said in an
interview Friday.
Hannah-Jones did not respond
to a request for comment Friday. In a tweet, she said Cotton’s bill “speaks to
the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career.”
In a written statement, Times
spokesman Jordan Cohen said the project “is based in part on decades of recent
scholarship by leading historians of early America that has profoundly expanded
our sense of the colonial and Revolutionary period. Much of this scholarship
has focused on the central role that slavery played in the nation’s founding.”
Recent scholarship “has
helped challenge prevailing narratives about our founding that prioritized the
ideals of the Revolution while paying scant attention to historical realities.”
In her introductory
essay, Hannah-Jones suggests that the Revolution was a reaction to the British
abolition movement, arguing that “one of the primary reasons the colonists
decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to
protect the institution of slavery [and]… ensure that slavery would continue.”
That “fact,” she said,
has been “[c]onveniently left out of our founding mythology.”
Critics say many of the
leading revolutionaries opposed slavery. New England, cradle of the revolution,
was also a stronghold for anti-slavery sentiment, they say.
Five renowned historians
— Sean Wilentz and James McPherson of Princeton, Brown University’s Gordon
Wood, Victoria Bynum of Texas State University and James Oakes of the City
University of New York Graduate Center — challenged Hannah-Jones’ premise last year,
and urged the Times to “issue prominent corrections of all the errors
and distortions presented in The 1619 Project.”
The Times defended the
project, but later walked back one key claim. Preservation of slavery, it now
states, was a key motivator for just “some of the colonists.”
While lauded by the
Pulitzer judges, the 1619 Project has been condemned by many conservatives,
including President Donald Trump. Now it’s under fire in the U.S. Senate as
well.
FEDERAL FUNDS THREATENED
If Cotton’s legislation
passes, school districts that embrace the curriculum would no longer qualify
for federal professional development funds, money that is intended to improve
teacher quality.
Federal funding would
also be lowered slightly to reflect any “cost associated with teaching the 1619
Project, including in planning time and teaching time.”
Funds tied to low-income
or special-needs students would not be affected.
The secretaries of
Education, Agriculture and Health and Human Services would create “prorated
formulas” to determine the size of the reduction in federal money for schools
adopting the curriculum.
“It won’t be much
money,” Cotton said. “But even a penny is too much to go to the 1619
Project in our public schools. The New York Times should not be teaching
American history to our kids.”
Capitol Hill isn’t the
place where curriculum decisions are typically made, Cotton acknowledged.
If educators want to use
the materials, they’ll still be free to do so, he said.
“Curriculum is a matter
for local decisions and if local left-wing school boards want to fill
their children’s heads with anti-American rot, that’s their regrettable choice.
But they ought not to benefit from federal tax dollars to teach America’s
children to hate America,” he said.
DISAGREEMENT ON HISTORY [elaboration
of the controversy between Cotton and the NYT and others and application to
Arkansas –D]
TOM COTTON ON THE “CHINA VIRUS”
On Mar 30, 2020, at 10:35 AM, Senator Tom Cotton <senator@cotton.senate.gov> wrote:
“China Virus Relief Information for
Arkansans.”On March 27th, President Trump signed the CARES Act,
legislation that will provide the emergency funds necessary to steer our
economy through the outbreak of the China Virus and help Americans meet their
financial needs. Part of that legislation provides a check in the form of a tax
rebate to the vast majority of Americans. Information about those tax rebates
is outlined below and can be found by clicking here.
That legislation also provides loans to struggling businesses, non-profits, and
other entities through the Small Business Administration.
Those loans are also eligible for forgiveness when used for the certain
purposes, including payroll, rent, mortgage interest, and utilities.
Information about those loans is also outlined below and can be found by clicking here.
Senator Cotton encourages all Arkansans with questions about how the CARES act
can benefit them to contact his office at (202) 224-2353 or (501) 223-9081 or
by emailing through the form on his website.
Recovery Checks For
Americans Background: On March 27th, President Trump signed
the CARES Act. . . .
[This is a long article following a Q&A format. –D)
Dear Senator Cotton,
In response to your message, and with all due
respect: It’s foolish and harmful to call this the “China virus.”
This could have happened in any of a number of other nations, including
the US where environmental regulation is generally lax and where the present
administration has little regard for scientific evidence. In fact, the
U.S. administration’s disregard for good science has been evident throughout
this entire episode.
Sincerely,
Art Hobson
Retired Professor of Physics, University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville
|
|
“‘World War III’ trends
as Hawks rejoice at Trump decision to assassinate Iranian military leader.
“ Originally published: Common Dreams on January 3, 2020 by Jake Johnson (more by Common Dreams)
| (Posted Jan 04, 2020).
Fascism, Imperialism, Strategy, WarIran, United StatesNewswire. mronline.org (1-5-20).
“Hawks are celebrating Soleimani’s assassination not because
they believe it weakened Iran…But because they believe we have passed an
irreversible point of escalation.”
“Respond yes to Mike Huckabee!”
Maya Porter via googlegroups.com. Rapid Responders 9-1-18.
We have the rare opportunity to respond
favorably to a Republican editorial. Mike Huckabee has an op-ed piece today
titled “Cotton is wrong.” He argues for passage of the prison and
sentencing reform bill in the Senate, which Cotton opposes. (Cotton says we
need more incarceration, not less!). . . .
Maya
Two Articles on Cotton Lying for Trump
“The Trap of Lying for Donald Trump”
By Amy Davidson Sorkin. The New Yorker. January 16, 2018.
In denigrating anyone who called the President out for his slurs,
Senators Cotton and Perdue (pictured here in August) show their willingness to
humiliate themselves on his behalf.
Photograph by Zach Gibson / Getty
On Monday, the Washington Post shed
some light on how Senators Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, and David Perdue, of
Georgia, felt able to assert that President Donald Trump had not referred to
Africa as a collection of “shithole” countries—a comment that the White House
itself did not, at first, bother to protest—and thus that those who said he
did, including their fellow-senators, were liars. According to the Post,
“Three White House officials said Perdue and Cotton told the White House that
they heard ‘shithouse’ rather than ‘shithole,’ allowing them to deny the
President’s comments on television over the weekend.” Is that how people sleep
at night in Trump’s Washington? The stories that Republicans tell themselves to
justify their partnership with, or obedience to, the President are not just
absurd; they are pathetic. SpongeBob SquarePants would be laughed out of the
Krusty Krab for telling them. And they are poisonous. MORE
“Sens. Cotton and Perdue are outed for lying on Trump’s behalf.” The Washington Post By Jennifer Rubin (January 16, 2018).
[Forwarded by Bob Bilig 1-16-18.]
There is no honor among anti-immigrant advocates and liars, I suppose. After
dutifully lying on behalf of the president regarding his abhorrent language
(“shithole countries”), Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) were
outed by the White House. The Post reports:
Three White House officials said Perdue and
Cotton told the White House that they heard “shithouse” rather than “shithole,”
allowing them to deny the president’s comments on television over the weekend.
The two men initially said publicly that they could not recall what the
president said.
Not only did these two repeatedly lie, but
Cotton also impugned the integrity of Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who told
the truth. Asked whether the accusation that Trump spoke the offending
words or the sentiment was phony, Cotton lied, “Yes.” He went
on to say, “Senator Durbin has misrepresented what happened in White House
meetings before, and he was corrected by Obama administration officials by it.”
Honorable men would resign after such a
remarkable revelation of their crummy character; neither Cotton nor Perdue
will. We still await the appearance of a single staffer of either who would
quit in protest.
The incident is telling in many respects, but
none more important for Republicans than this: They can lie and enable
the president hoping to score brownie points, but this White House won’t repay
loyalty in kind. Instead, Republicans will find themselves humiliated.
So to recap: The president described a
preference for Norwegian (i.e. white) immigrants over those from “shithole”
countries (African nations). He gave the Congressional Black Caucus the back of
the hand. (“At one point, Durbin told the president that members
of that caucus — an influential House group — would be more
likely to agree to a deal if certain countries were included in the
proposed protections, according to people familiar with the meeting. Trump
was curt and dismissive, saying he was not making immigration policy
to cater to the CBC and did not particularly care about that bloc’s
demands, according to people briefed on the meeting. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’
one adviser said, describing Trump’s reaction.”) He blew up a possible deal on
the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, bragged about his actions to
friends and then lied to the public about what he said. Two U.S. senators lied
as well and then were double-crossed by White House aides.
This raises several questions: Why
should these Republicans hold elected office? Why should anyone
believe them in the future? And lastly, what is the appropriate
response to them?
Given that the two senators lied to the faces
of interviewers on the Sunday talk shows, network bookers might
consider never having them on air again. They are known prevaricators, so
whatever they say on their shows cannot be relied upon as credible. News
outlets should respect their viewers by denying airtime for those with so
little respect for the truth.
In addition, Durbin might consider filing
ethics claims against both of the senators, seeking appropriate punishment by
the Senate. The ethics committee has jurisdiction to consider “complaints and investigate
allegations of improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate, violations
of law, violations of the Senate Code of Official Conduct and violations of
rules and regulations of the Senate, relating to the conduct of individuals in
the performance of their duties as Members of the Senate, or as officers or
employees of the Senate, and to make appropriate findings of fact and
conclusions with respect thereto.” I cannot imagine that publicly impugning
another member’s integrity for the purpose of sustaining a lie would not
constitute “improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate.”
Democrats have every reason to shame and shun
these two Republicans, who have behaved in such a nakedly partisan and
dishonest fashion. I’d like to think that all senators would,
but we already know how deep the tribal instinct runs.
As for Trump, the more details that emerge,
the more nakedly racist and dishonest he appears. Under these circumstances, my
suggestion about boycotting the State of the Union might actually catch on. Moreover, I
don’t see any purpose in conducting in-person meetings with the president
behind closed doors when he and Republican supplicants will lie about what goes
on. Perhaps lawmakers should insist that all their interactions with the
president be recorded so as to prevent more incidents such as this in the
future.
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for
The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. Follow @JRubinBlogger
Charles Pierce. “What Tom Cotton Would Mean for the CIA. It's a terrifying, dangerous prospect.” Esquire (Nov. 30, 2017).
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13989794/tom-cotton-cia-danger/
If he really gets the fast shuffle out of town, I’m not going to miss Rex Tillerson as
much as I miss what used to be the State Department before Rex took over. But
if the post-Rex options really are Mike Pompeo at State and Tom Cotton at CIA,
then I’m going to burn a goat carcass to Baal to intercede and bring Tillerson
back. Replacing the invisible man with two dangerous lightweights is not a deal
that any sensible democracy should make. . . .
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Frank Lockwood.
“Nominee Dies Still on ‘Hold.’” AD-G (June 9, 2016). 2A. “Obama’s Choice for Ambassador
Spent Final Days on Cotton Delay.”
Cotton blocked Cassandra Butts’ 2014 nomination as Ambassador to the
Bahamas while he pushed Obama to punish the Secret Service for alleged illegal
snooping.
David Orr. Salon (6-8-16).
Chair of the imbecile
caucus: Sen. Tom Cotton proudly stands at the vanguard of shameless Republican
obstructionism. http://www.salon.com/2016/06/08/chair_of_the_imbecile_caucus_sen_tom_cotton_proudly_stands_at_the_vanguard_of_shameless_republican_obstructionism/
“Tom Cotton
and American Fascism” by Abel Tomlinson.
March 26, 2015. https://www.freeweekly.com/2015/03/26/tom-cotton-and-american-fascism/
Tragically, many Americans unknowingly support fascism. Many
prominent leaders are de facto fascists and their followers are clueless.
History teachers generally fail us. Responsible teachers would require every
student read FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace’s 1944 New York
Times article titled, “The Danger of American Fascism.” Among other important
characteristics, Wallace explains American fascism here:
“The American fascist would prefer…to poison the channels of
public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the
truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into
giving the fascist and his group more money or more power…If we define an
American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of
human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United
States.”
FDR also said “…the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes
stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is
Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other
controlling private power.” According to these definitions, it is very safe to
say American fascism has grown immensely, both in leadership and unwitting
followers.
Most directly, politicians and the Supreme Court are attacking
democracy, unleashing floods of corrupting money in elections, and supporting
policies that advance and protect concentrations of wealth and power. Simply
put, this is building fascism. They also twist truth constantly to manipulate
gullible minds. Propaganda and financial election controls are the keys to
their car. Fox News, right wing radio and right wing religion are the primary
engine, but all mainstream media is partially responsible too.
The Koch brothers are exemplary fascist shadow rulers,
who would destroy everything we hold dear in the name of false “liberty.” Tom
Cotton, the darling of the Kochs, Wall Street and the Israel Lobby, is the
poster boy of American fascism. If the Kochs were 11-year-old girls, Tom would
be their Justin Bieber. Virtually all the policies this ilk supports are in the
interest of the richest few.
Writing for the Harvard Crimson, younger Tom wrote, ”The only
real way to solve our current problems is to deregulate campaign
financing…(and) sharply increase contribution limits or eliminate them
altogether…” This is in complete harmony with David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian
campaign platform for vice president. In addition to abolishing Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, minimum wage and everything else that helps the
elderly, sick, and poor, Koch stated, “We urge the repeal of federal campaign
finance laws.”
The Kochs and lapdog Tom got their wish with the Supreme Court’s
decisions in Citizens United and McCutcheon. These decisions build on
jurisprudence that is sulfuric acid to self government. In addition to cases
giving corporations Constitutional rights under corporate personhood dating
back to Santa Clara in 1886, the landmark 1976 Buckley decision held that
money is speech.
Now, taken altogether, the Supreme Court is saying corporations
and the ultra-rich have free speech protections to spend unlimited amounts of
money to buy candidates, elections, and ultimately the laws. It is legalized
bribery and corruption. Unfortunately, the poor mice cannot $peak beyond a
squeak, while the wealthy banshees scream at a million decibels on every TV
channel.
Now, avalanches of money are suffocating our elections to the
point that a 2014 Princeton study concluded America is no longer a democracy.
After examining data from 1,800 policy initiatives between 1981 and 2002,
researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that the richest few
control the country in an oligarchy.
Gilens and Page write: “The central point that emerges from our
research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business
interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while
mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent
influence.”
With this understanding of American oligarchy, apply FDR’s
definition of fascism as “ownership of Government by an individual, by a
group, or by any other controlling private power.” Oligarchy and fascism are
identical. Those that promote rule by the rich are fascists.
Generally, Republican politicians have become hardcore fascist,
and Democratic politicians are guilty to a lesser degree. However, politicians
are often rendered puppets under pressure from the corporate and military
elites that hold the most fundamental capitalist power. If one is ambitious for
“winning” and “success,” the system strongly encourages you to become a
professional liar for the oligarchs.
In minor dissent from the Princeton study saying our democracy
is a corpse, I would add a glimmer of hope. There is one last vestige of
democracy holding back complete oligarchy, which is what remains of the Bill of
Rights, after being undermined by Dubya and Obama’s terror war. Our votes for
puppets may not matter as much as money, but we still have First Amendment
protections of actual speech, press, religion and assembly.
Let us remember the words of Woody Guthrie, “…you fascists may
be surprised, people in this world are getting organized. All you fascists
bound to lose.”
Abel Tomlinson
is a self employed Horticulturist, an independent mind, a
love-motivated justice and peace advocate, and former Congressional candidate.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. Abel can be
reached at abeltomlinson@gmail.com.
END TOM COTTON ANTHOLOGY 9-28-26
