Tom Cotton

Seven things you can say about Tom Cotton

Featured image Today is the official publication date of Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, by Senator Tom Cotton. Senator Cotton is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He became its chairman in the new Congress. As I like to say of authorities when the assertion applies: he knows what he is talking about. John Hinderaker previewed the book here last week. I recommend it and want to add these »

The Enemy Is China

Featured image Steve has noted that President Trump is working hard to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end. In a closely related development, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned our NATO allies that they will have to be primarily responsible for defending Europe: America cannot be relied upon to guarantee the security of Europe from Russia because it has to focus on its own borders and the threat of China, President »

Hegseth: Lights high and low

Featured image Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s word has gone forth. He has privately urged his members to use the confirmation hearings on President Donald Trump’s nominees to hold their “feet to the fire.” Some translation is required. “Turn the confirmation hearings into a circus” would be more like it. Reviewing clips of the Hegseth confirmation hearing, I assess that the Schumer strategy backfired in the case of Pete Hegseth, slated to »

Suppress the PRESS Act

Featured image My friendship with Senator Tom Cotton extends back to his service as an infantry platoon leader in Baghdad. In the 2006 Weekly Standard column “Exposure” and here on Power Line I urged the prosecution of New York Times reporters for violations of the Espionage Act that endangered the lives of American soldiers during the Iraq war. Thinking along the same lines, then Lieutenant Cotton wrote a powerful open letter to »

Insurrection at DOD?

Featured image On Monday, Senator Tom Cotton wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, criticizing actions within the Department of Defense that have been reported in the press. I haven’t seen the letter in downloadable form, but I believe this is the complete text: Secretary Austin, I write to express my concern that Pentagon officials are seeking to undermine President Trump’s incoming administration. It appears that partisans and obstructionists inside the Department »

Cotton faces Costa

Featured image The Sunday morning gabfests are generally a waste of time, but Senator Tom Cotton’s appearances are not to be missed. He was the lead guest on Face the Nation yesterday. I have posted the video at the bottom. CBS has posted the transcript here. Robert Costa filled in for regular host Margaret Brennan. Costa asked Senator Cotton about Israel’s potential expansion of the war between Israel and Iran. This is »

Bashing Dana

Featured image The Biden administration is pushing yet another edition of Russia! Russia! Russia! in collaboration with its media adjunct in the run-up to this year’s election. I have lost count, but I believe this is take 3. CNN’s Dana Bash sought to contribute to this year’s model in her interview with Senator Tom Cotton yesterday. Senator Cotton has posted video of his segment here on YouTube and I have embedded it »

Memory against forgetting

Featured image Milan Kundera famously observed: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Jon Karl of ABC News — he is not engaged in the struggle. He is on the side of power. He supports forgetting. He’s a memory hole kind of guy. Here is the video clip of Senator Tom Cotton cutting through Karl’s fog yesterday on This Week (transcript here). As NewsBusters puts it: »

Kamala’s Stealth Campaign Exposed

Featured image Check out this wonderful exchange between Tom Cotton and Jonathan Karl on this morning’s This Week show. Karl desperately assures Cotton that Kamala Harris has changed her mind about all her old radical ideas (of which he seems unaware), even though, in fact, she hasn’t: this is an incredible exchange. Karl has no idea what Cotton is talking about. Once Cotton tells him, he says she disavows. Cotton says she »

Sen. Cotton speaks for me

Featured image Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton appeared on Fox News Channel’s Life, Liberty & Levin over the weekend. As we await the enlargement of the war on Israel this week, Senator Cotton speaks for me. The Biden/Harris regime poses the question Why Not the Worst? — far worse than Jimmy Carter’s Why Not the Best? presidency. Carter at least learned something from events. The contemporary Democrats exhibit a highly developed immunity to »

Karl versus Cotton

Featured image Senator Tom Cotton appeared for an interview by ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week yesterday (transcript here). I missed it. You missed it. We all missed it. The interview proceeded in the form of cross-examination. Karl sought to put words in Cotton’s mouth or elicit his agreement to the axioms planted in his leading questions. He wants his colleagues to know he’s working hard on behalf of the Democrats. Addressing »

Trump’s VP List?

Featured image It is all over but the shouting in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, so it is reasonable for attention to turn to Donald Trump’s choice of a running mate. As Trump himself has pointed out, vice presidential picks generally have little or no impact on presidential races. Still, given the advanced age of the prospective nominees, voters might pay a little more attention than usual to their choices »

A conversation with Tom Cotton, round 3

Featured image In between his conversations with Mark Helperin in October and with Roger Zakheim this month, Senator Tom Cotton sat for a wide-ranging interview with our friend Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution on November 14. I’m so old I remember riding the elevator with Pennsylvania’s courtly Senator Hugh Scott when I worked as a Senate intern in the summer of 1969. Now Peter’s interview with Senator Cotton takes place in »

A conversation with Tom Cotton

Featured image I’m on the distribution list for Mark Halperin’s Wide World of News on Substack and accordingly received notice of Halperin’s interview of Senator Tom Cotton this past Wednesday evening (video below). Halperin drew Senator Cotton out on subjects of current interest including the latest on the Hamas/Israel war and American support of Ukraine. Early on in the interview Senator Cotton expressed the (almost certainly vain) hope that Biden has delivered »

China contributes

Featured image In an alternative universe where the bigfoot media reported the news, Alana Goodman’s findings would be a major story for reasons that require no explanation: “Foreign Nations Poured Millions Into University That Houses Biden Institute.” The university is of course the University of Delaware, about which no one beyond the borders of Delaware should bestir himself. Goodman reports: China, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Turkey have poured millions of dollars into »

The world according to Tom Cotton: A footnote

Featured image Wall Street Journal Global View columnist Walter Russell Mead writes today about Senator Tom Cotton’s new book Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power. I know from Senator Cotton himself, by the way, that he is a great fan of Mead’s Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. (Walter only observes in passing that Senator Cotton “mentions my work in the text.”) »

Tom Cotton hangs tough

Featured image Although it was noted in the news on February 1, I first heard on the grapevine a few weeks later that Senator Tom Cotton has put a hold on every pending United States Attorney nomination. He has placed the hold over his objection to the Justice Department’s refusal to undertake the defense of four federal marshals being sued for their work defending the Portland federal courthouse in the George Floyd »