Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Mehdi Hasan — In the Age of Trump, Tom Cotton May Be America’s Most Dangerous Senator

You might call Cotton, who is now being touted as the next director of the CIA, the “Trump whisperer.” In fact, according to the Weekly Standard, in a recent meeting with his top national security and foreign policy advisers, “having failed to receive the decertification option from his own team, Trump called Senator Tom Cotton and put him on speakerphone. The president asked Cotton to make the case for decertifying the Iran deal. Cotton took five minutes and walked Trump and his team through the case, emphasizing one point in particular: re-certifying the deal would be declaring that it was in the national security interest of the United States, something Cotton understood that Trump didn’t believe.”
The Weekly Standard report added that Trump “left the phone call” convinced that the decision to decertify was “the right one.”
Got that? The reality TV star who now occupies the Oval Office defied the advice of his own inner circle, including Defense Secretary James Mattis; ignored the pleas of America’s closest allies; and dismissed the evidence offered by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran is in compliance with the terms of the deal. Instead, he decided to go with the advice of a 40-year-old freshman senator from Arkansas, who has zero expertise in Middle East diplomacy and none in the field of nuclear proliferation.
Probably not just Tom Cotton. I suspect that Trump had already made up his mind and Cotton was just a cover. But the fact Trump chose Cotton for this is indicative.

The question now is when Mattis, McMaster, Kelly and Tillerson are going to resign before their credibility and reputations are shredded.

The Intercept

No comments: