Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton ripped the “van drivers and campaign flacks and failed novelists” who work national security at the White House Monday as kept up his opposition to the Iran deal.
During an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Cotton blasted the White House after press secretary Josh Earnest openly mocked the Arkansas senator during Monday’s briefing, saying he was presenting “a wide range of information about the Iran deal that wasn’t true” — most notably that Iran will receive $150 billion in sanctions relief thanks to the deal. Many administration officials disagree with that assessment, arguing instead that the sanctions relief will amount to about $5 billion.
“I guess I became public enemy number one at the White House, Hugh, because I’m telling the truth about the Iran deal,” Cotton told Hewitt. “Look, what you just played, and some of the coverage of Ben Rhodes is what happens when you put van drivers and campaign flacks and failed novelists in charge of foreign policy and national security.”
“That chump may think that subsidizing Iran’s nuclear program with millions of dollars is a laughing matter. I don’t think it’s that funny,” Cotton continued. “And if he or anyone else over there had ever been man enough to put on the uniform and pick up a rifle, and have to lead men in dodging Iranian-made bombs, they might not be laughing, either.”
Cotton, who sits on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees, continued ripping staffers in the White House for their inexperience, most of which he says comes from his 2008 and 2012 campaign. In particular, he took issue with comments by former White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, who compared congressional Republicans in 2013 during the Obamacare fight to suicide bombers.
“Most of who’s left in the administration now are all these yes men and fan boys who were van drivers or press flaks for Barack Obama in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008,” Cotton said.
“This reminds me of the time back during the big fight over Obamacare and the government spending bill in the fall of 2013. And one of the guys over there accused the House Republicans of being suicide bombers, if you recall that,” Cotton said. “As if any of them had ever seen anything more dangerous than a shoving match when they were playing beer pong in the back of a bar in Georgetown.”
Cotton’s comments come a little more than a week after a profile of Rhodes ran in the New York Times Magazine, during which the formerly aspiring novelist describes his role in creating an “echo chamber” in order to sell the Iran deal to the public.
