Tom Cotton’s Ready for His Close-up: Senator Auditions for Trump
Arkansas Republican’s Sunday appearance clearly meant for an audience of one
Apparently, it’s Sen Tom Cotton’s turn.
The Arkansas Republican — probably best-known these days for suggestions that protesters be thrown to their deaths off a bridge — clearly was using an appearance on one of the Sunday news programs to try-out for the role of Donald Trump’s new running mate.
Along with his South Carolina colleague, Sen Tim Scott, Cotton is one of a crowd of Republicans falling over themselves to get the nod as Trump’s vice presidential pick ahead of next month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis.
Cotton may have appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, but he very much was playing to an audience of one: Donald Trump. He parroted many of Trump’s right-wing talking points.
Trump will officially be nominated as the Republican candidate for president next month, just days after he is sentenced in a New York courtroom after being found guilty of 34 felonies, and he will need a running mate for the campaign heading into the fall.
Cotton backed Trump’s desire to look at pardoning those who were convicted for their activities during the violent January 6, 2021 insurrection in which Trump supporters attempted to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.
He also opposed President Biden’s support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion, blaming Biden for the invasion.
“I have noticed that Vladimir Putin only invades Ukraine when Democrats are president. It happened under Barack Obama. It happened under Joe Biden. It didn’t happen with Donald Trump,” Cotton said. “In fact, the weapons that Ukraine used in the early days of this war to fend off the Russian invasion are the weapons that Donald Trump sent, that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had refused to send. One reason why Joe Biden — or why Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with going for the jugular in Ukraine is because of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which projected weakness and indecision. It was just a few weeks later that he began to mass troops on Ukraine’s border.”
CNN host Jake Tapper specifically asked Cotton about whether he would serve as Trump’s vice presidential running mate.
“If the president asked me to serve in any capacity, I would, of course, entertain it,” Cotton said. “But, right now, I’m very happy being a senator representing the people of Arkansas and working to elect President Trump and a majority of the Congress so we can begin to repair some of the damage that Joe Biden and the Democrats have inflicted over these last four years.”
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