Sen. Tom Cotton took a dig at Susan Rice on Tuesday, saying former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser was at the center of several of the administration’s foreign policy scandals or failures.
“Susan Rice was the Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration foreign policy,” Cotton said during an interview on Fox News, referring to Mary Mallon, who is believed to have infected dozens of people with typhoid fever in the early 1900s. “Every major debacle in President Obama’s tenure, Susan Rice was right in the middle of.”
Rice is atop a short list of candidates who have been vetted by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign as a possible vice presidential candidate.
Biden has faced increasing pressure to pick a woman of color for the post, and an announcement on his decision is expected this week.
[Read more: Bass crash leaves two top Biden VP picks and several sleepers]
Rice was left off a lengthy list of speakers slated to address delegates at the Democratic National Convention next week, a snubbing that led to further speculation regarding her chances of being picked as vice president.
“Historically, we slotted everyone who was a VP contender into the program. Then, you switch them out if they are picked,” a person familiar with the DNC’s lineup of speakers told Politico this week. “How deep you go is a question. There are 10 people on the Biden list. But if they are a serious contender, they would have a spot. And my understanding is that they have already been slotted.”
Rice has been highly critical of Trump, whose defenders in Congress and some in the media have warned that Rice oversaw the handling of scandals such as the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi and the Iranian nuclear deal.
“Look at China,” Cotton said. “She consistently counseled appeasement towards China. She commanded that our military leaders in the Pacific not raise China’s efforts to militarize the South China Sea and create bases out of rocks in the water to extend the range of their planes and their missiles. She was right in the middle of the Iran nuclear deal. She counseled appeasement of Russia going into the 2016 election, and then after the election, she was at the center of spying on the Trump campaign and unmasking American citizens who had been caught up in that dragnet.”
Other critics have pointed to Rice’s lack of experience as an elected official.
“It is true I have never run for office on my own behalf, but I’ve run for office on behalf of others,” Rice said during an interview with the New York Times last week. “If I were to decide to do it, there’s nothing about it that on its face would feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar.”
