Tom Cotton was once an unlikely ally of and successor to President Trump. The Arkansas senator was once hailed by leading Never Trumpers as the future of the Republican Party and seen as a defender of the foreign policy Trump mostly campaigned against in the GOP primaries.
Instead, Cotton, 43, has emerged as part of a small populist contingent on Capitol Hill that is close to the Trump White House. No longer just a foreign policy hawk, he has succeeded Jeff Sessions as the Senate’s top immigration hawk. He shares Trump’s views on China. He argued in the New York Times for using the military to suppress rioting that broke out following George Floyd’s death in police custody, triggering a staff revolt and editorial upheaval at the paper.
Cotton denounced “nihilist criminals” who “are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.” Trump has similarly spoken of left-wing and antifa radicals burning American cities.
The senator has also tried to square his foreign policy with Trump’s talk of “America First” and winding down “endless wars.” “No one who’s seen the face of war desires to see it again,” Cotton said at this year’s Republican National Convention. “Too many of our fellow Americans are already honored at the hallowed grounds of Arlington. But if we want peace, we must be strong. Weakness is provocative. President Trump’s strength has kept us out of war.”
A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, Cotton enlisted in the Army and served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was elected to Congress in his 30s, serving a single term in the House before defeating incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in the 2014 midterm elections, when the GOP finally captured the Senate after several years of trying.
Cotton then promptly became one of the most outspoken opponents of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. He organized a letter, signed by 46 other Republican senators, to Tehran pointing out the agreement was not ratified by the Senate, did not have the force of a treaty, and could therefore be revoked by a future administration. Trump subsequently did pull out of the pact.
After Trump came to power in 2017, Cotton teamed up with Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, to introduce the RAISE Act. This legislation would reduce the number of legal immigrants admitted annually and shift requirements away from family reunification toward employment skills. Trump endorsed it as a move away from “chain migration” toward “merit-based” immigration. Cotton was also involved in bipartisan negotiations over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Obama created to shield from deportation some illegal immigrants who arrived as minors. Trump rescinded this executive action but was open to a legislative alternative.
Following the pandemic, Cotton led the charge for the United States to punish China for its role in the spread of the coronavirus. He introduced the $43 billion Forging Operational Resistance to Chinese Expansion, or FORCE, Act. “More Americans than ever, like more Asians than ever, recognize that China is a pariah state, and we ought to treat them like a pariah state,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Cotton is considered a likely candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in what is sure to be a fierce battle for the post-Trump direction of the party.
