Susan Glasser recorded a podcast under the moniker of Global Politico yesterday with Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. Glasser focused the interview on national security and foreign policy issues. Senator Cotton expresses himself trenchantly in complete sentences and full paragraphs. He is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He speaks frequently with President Trump. He knows what he is talking about. The interview is lucid and informative.
I have embedded the Stitcher version of the audio below. The transcript is posted here. Glasser’s write-up with embedded audio is posted here under the heading I have borrowed for this post.
Glasser introduces the interview with a preview of coming attractions: “This is a moment of truth for President Trump’s national security team. He is set to overrule both his secretaries of State and Defense on the Iran nuclear deal this week, declaring it no longer in the U.S. ‘national interest’ in explicit contradiction to their public position. And if they don’t like it, Senator Tom Cotton says, then they should get out.”
Reading recommended by Senator Cotton: Walter Russell Mead, A Special Providence.
Quotable quote: “I would submit that [Trump’s] foreign policy, over these first nine months in office, is much more in keeping with the bipartisan tradition of foreign policy, starting with Truman in 1945 and going through George Bush in 2009, than President Obama’s policy was. In almost every area, in his own way, with his own rhetoric, he has reasserted American leadership, and he’s willing to confront threats before they gather….So even though his rhetoric may sound unusual to the foreign-policy establishment in Washington and New York and Brussels, I think his foreign policy itself is much more in keeping with a long bipartisan tradition than Barack Obama’s was.”
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