Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR)
Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton's Senate campaign claim
claim that ISIS and Mexican drug cartels "collaborate" and "could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas" defied belief at first read. And
for good reason, a brutal
Washington Post fact-check shows. Of the six articles Cotton's campaign provided Greg Sargent to back up the claim:
Two were actually the same article, just published in different places, though one was missing a correction that negated the entire premise.
Another was based on a claim from a man named Michael Maloof that he thought ISIS "may be" working with drug cartels. Maloof:
... gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as one of the key people involved in a DOD intelligence effort to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda and was likely to provide weapons of mass destruction to terror groups.
And so on. Meanwhile, according to the Department of Homeland Security, "DHS continues to have no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border."
Cotton was looking to scare people, pure and simple. He probably wasn't looking to draw this kind of media attention—his Islamo-Mexican drug terrorists on the border claim was made not in a campaign ad but on a tele-town-hall. There's competition for the title of Republican running the cheapest, nastiest, most lie-filled campaign, but between this and his farm bill lies, Cotton at least deserves a spot on the bracket.
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