On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who we noted that during his military service, had to be court-martialed in 2004 because he went over the heads of his superiors and wrote an opinion editorial to the New York Times calling for the arrest of three of its reporters for reporting things happening during the War on Terror that he didn’t particularly like. This demand to deny the freedom of the press by ignoring those higher up in the chain of command apparently taught Tom Cotton nothing, as in 2015, he became the leader of the #47Traitors, which were himself and 46 Republican Senators who tried to sabotage ongoing negotiations between the State Department and Iranian diplomats to create a nuclear treaty by writing a letter to the leaders of Iran that claimed they would just ignore the treaty after the next president was elected (which they actually can’t do). Hundreds of thousands of people signed online petitions to see Sen. Cotton brought up on charges for violating the Logan Act, and he still didn’t back down, comparing the Obama administration’s effort to Neville Chamberlain appeasing Nazi Germany and saying that Secretary of State John Kerry “acted like Pontius Pilate”. This is but the tip of the iceberg, as Tom Cotton is a dumbass in oh so many ways, including his belief that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had a role in planning 9/11 (he said as much in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN back in January of 2013, despite that idea being debunked by investigators a decade earlier), calling people on food stamps “addicts” who are “abusing taxpayer dollars”, tried scaring people away from signing up for the Affordable Care Act because “Russian mobsters will steal your identity”, and has no plans to do anything about the United States’ mass incarceration problem, criticizing efforts to reform our criminal justice system in a speech before the Hudson Institute where he said “If anything, we’re under-incarcerating.” Oh, and after the mass shooting in Orlando, Democrats filibustered the Senate for a vote to keep individuals on the “no fly list” for being a known terrorist from being able to buy firearms and carry out mass shootings, but again, Sen. Cotton votes against the common sense measure, that nine out of ten Americans support. In July of, 2016, Tom Cotton spoke at a panel hosted by Politico at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and gives the alarming analysis that the United States can just intervene in Syria, and should any Russian jets intervene on behalf of their allies in the Assad regime, to just shoot them down, too, because of the AUMFs signed way back in 2001 and 2002 that were meant to fight the war on terror and hunt for Osama bin Laden would also apply to this situation. Were we not clear this guy’s a war hungry nut?
On February 22nd, 2017, Cotton hosted his first town hall since the election of Donald Trump, and seemed rather surprised at how many extremely pissed off people showed up. Cotton was humiliated after being dressed down by an 7 year old speaker who seemed distressed that Cotton would support funding for Trump’s $20-30 billion dollar border wall, but balk at only millions of dollars allocated to fund PBS. At one point, he sarcastically asked how many people had actually been positively affected by the Affordable Care Act to stand up and after hundreds of people in the room stood, dismissed them out of hand. That became harder, of course, when a 25 year old woman with a genetic disorder, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, who arrived in a wheelchair pointed out that even if Planned Parenthood funding provided to the Affordable Care Act was repealed that funds her regular cancer screenings, without hyperbole, that she would die. Cotton just assured her she’d be fine, and was booed, because no one was buying that bulls***. The positive side effect, though? Donations towards the woman’s healthcare spiked after the exchange, so at least someone there not named Tom Cotton had a heart. Because Cotton seemed to invest stock into the theory that the anger he faced was actually coming from paid protesters sent by anonymous left wing donors (a conspiracy theory peddled by Donald Trump), when he told the crowd, “I don’t care if anybody here is paid or not. Two months later on April 17th, 2017, Cotton hosted another town hall, sent the crowd into a rage after failing to explain why he wouldn’t use his powers as a Senator to just use the evidence that was already known and subpoena Donald Trump’s tax returns, since he broke his promise to release them to the public, provoking them to begin chanting, “LOCK HIM UP!” at him. Criticism is apparently something Senator Cotton cannot process, because he’s taken to actually sending “cease and desist” letters to constituents who dare to call his office in Washington, D.C. to complain. No, we’re not exaggerating, he’s this petty.
Sen. Cotton has tethered himself to the legacy of Donald Trump, arguably more than any other sitting member of the Senate, and hasn’t hesitated to defend him whenever an opportunity presents itself. Literally the day after the 2016 election, Sen. Cotton showed his eager excitement that the United States would, under Donald Trump, return to the practice of waterboarding. Even though the International Red Cross officially designated the practice as torture in 2014, and therefore it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention. Hell, Cotton’s drinking the Kool-Aid so hard he’s even on board with Trump’s plan to crack down not just on illegal immigration, but LEGAL immigration. More importantly, Sen. Cotton has been one of the Trump administration’s best obfuscators during the Trump Russia investigation, going on cable news to try and somehow lay blame for it on Ambassador Susan Rice as “the Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration” (don’t try to think about it because it makes no sense). During the testimony of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was to serve as a witness regarding the firing of FBI Director James Comey for investigating the Trump/Russia connection, Sen. Cotton used his time with the witness to to just playfully ask Sessions if he was a fan of the Jason Bourne movies or James Bond movies.
It wasn’t enough that Tom Cotton voted to put accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, it wasn’t that he was grinning like an idiot after doing so, but after the fight was supposedly over, in October of 2018, Cotton began to posit conspiracy theories about the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, and who it was that revealed her credible accusations of Brett Kavanaugh being an attempted rapist. At first, he blamed Diane Feinstein, and then only about a week later, falsely claiming Chuck Schumer orchestrated the whole thing to smear Kavanaugh. (SPOILER ALERT: Like all conservative conspiracy theories, it was utter bulls***.)
Cotton’s so far up Donald Trump’s *** that he actually tried lying to cover for him and claim that Trump never referred to Haiti and a large swath of African nations as “s***hole countries” during a discussion on immigration, contradicting even Lindsey Graham on the matter. When farmers in the rural Mid-West began to criticize Trump for is unnecessary trade war making it impossible for them to do business, he scoffed at their suffering, and said “pretty minimal compared to the sacrifices that our soldiers make overseas,” because of course this heartless motherf***er will use our troops as a political prop whenever it’s convenient and the situations are as much apples and oranges as possible.
These are the issues that could be his undoing when he’s next up for election in 2020, and he can go back to his role in serving as a low budget stunt double for Bert from Sesame Street (he might want PBS defunded because he’s bitter he never got the lead role).