Sen. Tom Cotton said Friday morning that Donald Trump would be “a more serious leader” as president than Hillary Clinton, arguing the same is true of any Republican currently running for the party’s nomination.
The Arkansas senator was asked for his impression of a closed-door meeting he had with the GOP front-runner Monday, with Morning Joe’s Willie Geist inquiring if Cotton “left that room thinking, ‘That’s someone who could be commander in chief.'”
“Well, I think he could be the commander in chief. He’s one of our leading candidates, and as I said, any of our candidates right now would be a better commander in chief” than Hillary Clinton, Cotton said, taking note of Trump’s electoral success in the Republican primary. “They’d be a more serious leader for our country than Hillary Clinton is, who has not only been the architect for Barack Obama’s foreign policy, which has left the world aflame, but has shown such a casual disregard for the handling of sensitive national security secrets, that I believe she’s disqualified from being the commander in chief.”
Cotton’s overall takeaway from the meeting with Trump, which included other elected GOP officials: “I didn’t hear much different from what we’ve heard in public.”
The first-term lawmaker, a leading voice for foreign policy in the party, specifically mentioned comments Trump made to The Washington Post editorial board about NATO. Cotton agreed with Trump’s view that the United States provides the alliance too big a percentage of financial support relative to European nations, but added that he would prefer those countries to hike their contributions, rather than have America reduce theirs.
“He identified a serious problem that I’ve tried to address, along with some of my colleagues,” Cotton said. “I would just have a slightly different solution to that problem.”
