Sen. Cotton's bipartisan knack for being disagreeable
As I sat in the hearing room watching Gina Haspels confirmation hearing to be director of central intelligence, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief
that Tom Cotton wasnt nominated to run the CIA.
Cotton, a 40-year-old Republican senator from Arkansas and a Trump loyalist, had been the front-runner for the position. But President Trump instead tapped a career CIA operative, and Cotton was on the dais when Haspel testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
Haspel has her flaws. Her lawyerly statements about torture and her role in destroying tapes of black-site interrogators using it did not inspire confidence that she would stand up to Trump if he pressed her to, say, poison Angela Merkels Pilsener.
But Haspels flaws are nothing compared with those of Cotton, who has surpassed Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as the most disliked member of the Senate. He used his five minutes of questioning time to clear up and to take exception to the entirely false things his colleagues said, peppering his remarks with gratuitous partisan swipes.
And then, he kept going.
When Rhode Islands Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was questioning Haspel about moral standards, Cotton heckled his senior colleague from the other side of the dais.
A few minutes after that, when intelligence committee Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner, D-Virginia, was giving closing remarks about former CIA director John Brennans views on torture, Cotton interrupted again.
-snip-
Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina hammered the gavel to silence his fellow Republican.
The senator will suspend, he ordered.
Cotton ignored Burr. We need the full record on the record! he continued.
No, Burr repeated. The senator will suspend.
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