Tom Cotton may be a senator at 37, but I'd bet you a lot he'll never be president.
Sen. Tom Cotton went on CNN Wednesday and continued his mission to become a conservative star of today and absolutely disqualify himself from ever being a viable presidential candidate of the future. Because probably even today and certainly in 2020, general election voters aren't going to go for this response to a question on the license-to-discriminate law Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he
will not sign unless it is brought in line with the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Cotton's bottom line: Shut up and be grateful America isn't executing gay people, because Iran.
No, really. Cotton's response on a major issue currently being debated in the state he represents in the United States Senate was 1) misinformation, 2) be glad you're not being executed, 3) change the subject. Here's how he did it: First, he claimed that "these laws are modeled on" the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed by one Bill Clinton, so everything is just fine and dandy.
The problem with that claim—Cotton's opening gambit—is that if the current Arkansas law was in fact modeled on the federal law, the state's Republican governor would not be asking that the legislature go back and change the language to model it on the federal law. But he kept talking:
But I also think it's important that we have a sense of perspective about our priorities. In Iran, they hang you for the crime of being gay.
Seriously, people, perspective! So what if you can be fired or refused service in a restaurant for being gay? No one's hanging you, so quit your unreasonable demands for equality.
They're currently imprisoning an American preacher for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ in Iran. We should focus on the most important priorities that our country faces right now, and I would say that a nuclear armed Iran ... is the most important thing that we be focusing on.
Ohhhh, I see. Cotton is impatient and angry that he's being asked to talk about something as unimportant as equality in America when the only issue he thinks anyone should be talking about, ever, at all, is how we can start a war with Iran. And his way to work the conversation back around to where he thinks it should be is to say, roughly, "shut up and be grateful we're not executing you." Classy, classy guy.