Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, a leading congressional hawk on U.S.-Russia relations, broke with President Donald Trump in his characterization of Vladimir Putin on Monday, but contextualized the commander in chief’s defense of the Kremlin last weekend as just one comment amid a broader approach to the American adversary.
Trump implied during an interview with Fox News aired Sunday that there is moral equivalence between the United States and Russia. “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers,” Trump said, after Bill O’Reilly used that same word to describe Putin. “What do you think—our country’s so innocent. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Cotton took a stance 180 degrees from Trump’s during an event at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
“I think the [administration’s] direction on Russia is still to be determined. There are signs in different directions. For instance, I wouldn’t have characterized President Putin the way President Trump did over the weekend. Vladimir Putin is KGB. Always has been, always will be,” Cotton said. “He’s an adversary of the United States. His intelligence services still refer to the United States as the main enemy, just like the Soviet Union used to refer to us during the Cold War.”
The combat veteran and member of the Senate’s armed services and intelligence panels hedged, however, saying that there is more to the White House’s posture than “one comment in an interview.”
“I would look at actual policy. So, for instance, his ambassador to the United Nations last week, Nikki Haley, made very forceful comments about Russian aggression that’s renewed on the eastern front of Ukraine,” he said. He also praised some of the president’s campaign pledges, such as rebuilding the U.S. military and facilitating domestic energy development, as well as top national security and defense officials like Pentagon chief James Mattis as assets that “are not good things” from the Kremlin’s perspective.
Leading Republican voices in the Senate, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio, have already sounded a different note from the apparently off-key one Trump played during the weekend. “I obviously don’t see this issue the same way he does,” McConnell told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Cotton, one of the GOP’s most prominent voices on matters of foreign policy, added to the alternative take of many in his party. But he agreed that it’d be healthy if the United States had a better relationship with Russia—something achievable likely through “American strength and pressure” only—and he lauded the president’s “healthy nationalism” in prepared remarks.
“In his inaugural address, [Trump] spoke of ‘America first.’ Now, I know this is considered a thought crime by the globe-trotting party of Davos. But to most Americans, it’s just plain common sense,” he said.
