Republican Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas confronted ABC host Jonathan Karl during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, during which discussions turned to ongoing pro-Palestine campus protests across the U.S.
The protests have been significant, with students demanding their schools divest from companies connected to Israel. In this charged conversation, Karl recognized the severity of some actions within the protests but aimed to find common ground on the acceptability of peaceful protests.
“You can protest all you want. If you want to make a fool of yourself and support a terrorist group, you can do that. Now if you are a foreigner, you can’t. Where’s Joe Biden’s administration demanding that universities turn over the names of any foreign students here on a visa, revoking those visas and deporting them? That’s something that Joe Biden can do today. But you are not allowed to violate the rules and policies and break the law,” Cotton stated.
“Where were the liberal administrators and liberal politicians sending in the police on the very first day? We should not have tolerated this for a moment. You have Jewish students who have been assaulted on campus. Jewish students have been told it’s not safe for you to come, go back home. Just blocks from here, Jon, you have one of the biggest ‘little Gazas’ left in George Washington University. Yesterday they called for a guillotine for the beheading of university administrators. Is that non-violent?”
“No, like I said there’s no doubt there’s plenty of vile stuff — there’s lots of vile things going on. There’s no doubt there’s also people legitimately protesting Israeli policy,” Karl responded.
As the discussion progressed, Karl tried to steer the conversation towards the 2024 presidential election and potential vice-presidential nominations, but Cotton continued to emphasize the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments underlying the protests.
“Well first off Jon, what we’re talking about is 2024. One of the many reasons why Donald Trump is going to win this election is you’ve got Democratic protesters out there putting a terrorist headdress on a statue of George Washington,” Cotton pushed back.
The intensity of the campus protests, including actions at GWU where students held a mock trial for university administrators and used rhetoric like calls for a guillotine, remained a focal point of Cotton’s critique.
“I mean I don’t know who is a Democrat or not. A lot of people are very upset with Joe Biden. But about you, are you — is that real, this talk of you being a running mate?” Karl pressed.
Despite Karl’s attempts to shift focus, Cotton reiterated his views on the implications of the protests for the upcoming election and criticized Biden’s lack of denouncement of these protests.
“You have patriots like these frat boys at UNC and around the country who are defending the American flag and Joe Biden refused for two weeks to come out and denounce it. That is the 2024 election,” Cotton stated.
Tom Cotton was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle, Arkansas. He attended Harvard University, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in government in 1998. After completing his undergraduate studies, Cotton continued his education at Harvard Law School, earning a Juris Doctor degree in 2002. Before launching his political career, he served in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer. Cotton’s military service included deployments to both Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division and as an operations officer with the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan. After his military service, he worked for McKinsey & Company and later began his political career, eventually being elected to the United States House of Representatives from Arkansas’s 4th district in 2012. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014, where he has been serving since.
The post Tom Cotton Clashes With ABC Journalist Over Campus Protests appeared first on Resist the Mainstream.
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Author: Nicholas Dolinger
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