Cotton Rebukes Putin, But Excuses Trump

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?”