Senator Tom Cotton joined me this AM to discuss the disastrous policies pursued by President Biden against Israel, inlcuding now the cut-off of precision munitions:

Audio:

05-07hhs-cotton

Transcript:

HH: Apparently, Joe Biden wants Israel to share the land with Hamas. We’re going to talk about that with Senator Tom Cotton, who joins me now, the senator from Arkansas. Good morning, Senator. How are you?

TC: Good morning, Hugh. I’m well. I hope you’re well. I hope all your listeners are well, too. It’s good to be back on with you.

HH: We’ve got a couple new affiliates in Illinois, and so they haven’t heard you before. I will just tell them you’ve been doing this in the House and the Senate for a long time, and you never make a mistake on air, so don’t, they can’t listen for a faceplant. But you do faceplant on sports a lot, because you spent seven years in Boston. Are you a Celtics fan as well as a Red Sox fan?

TC: (laughing) No, Hugh, I’m really not an NBA or basketball fan anymore. I have to say, back in my youth, in the days of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, it was by far my favorite sport. But over the last 20-25 years, it’s just fallen out of favor.

HH: Okay, just so you’re not on the wrong side of history tonight. The Cavs are going to take on the Celtics.

TC: I’m well aware of why you’re asking.

HH: Let’s get to the Israeli…okay, let’s just ask now. It has been confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. I played a clip of you on Fox yesterday. It had not yet been confirmed. Confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, Times of Israel, the United States has delayed shipments of JDAMs, precision-guided munitions. It is inexplicable, because that means Israel will have to use less precise munitions with more casualties to civilians. What do, what is the thinking of the President and his advisors?

TC: Well, Hugh, I take it as confirmed at this point. Now it’s not just Axios, but the Wall Street Journal reporting it, and the fact that John Kirby from the National Security Council refused to confirm or deny it yesterday. Again, I think it means we can take it that it’s confirmed that the administration has delayed the delivery of thousands of precision-guided munitions. I disagree, Hugh, that it’s inexplicable. Inexplicable means that it can’t be explained. It can easily be explained. Joe Biden, from the very beginning of this war, has put more pressure on Israel than he has put on Hamas, or some of Hamas’ patrons in the region. And that’s almost entirely because of the left-wing, and indeed the increasingly antisemitic wing of his party. And you see it time and again. You see it in the failure to deliver these weapons in a timely fashion, to publicly demanding that Israel not conduct an absolutely necessary military operation in Rafah, wasting or taxpayer dollars and putting our soldiers at risk to build this stupid floating pier so we can send more aid into Gaza as if it’s somehow America’s responsibility or Israel’s responsibility to send aid to the civilians in Gaza, as opposed to Hamas’ responsibility to make sure that they get necessary provisions, and for that matter, that they’re not killed while being used as human shields. Time and time again at every turn, Joe Biden has put more pressure on Israel than Hamas. I think what I would say is it’s counterproductive, as you suggested, or self-defeating, not just this particular decision, but his policy going back to October 8th, because if he had simply backed Israel to the hilt, made it clear that we were going to do so, Israel would have had the freedom of action to destroy Hamas more quickly, and the civilian suffering in Gaza would have ended sooner rather than later. By protracting this war, Joe Biden has only made things worse in Gaza.

HH: Now Senator, one time can be a mistake. Two times could mean incompetence. Three times is a pattern. The Afghanistan collapse, the failure to give Ukraine what they needed when they need it so that they could exploit their initial surprise and advantage on their first offensive, and now this. The pattern of the Biden administration is never don’t retreat, and never play to win. Am I overstating it? Or is that true?

TC: No, I think you’re understating it, Hugh, because you only cite three instances. You could cite three thousand instances of Joe Biden’s 52 years in public life. Remember, Bob Gates, who worked with him up close in the first year and a half of the Obama administration said that he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security decision of the last 40 years. You can now make it 50 years, because he wrote that 10 years ago. He opposed, for instance, the bin Laden raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He repeatedly opposed things like missile defense systems when Ronald Reagan wanted to invest in missile defenses that are now being used to protect our troops in Israel and the Middle East, thank goodness. He consistently sided with communist revolutionaries and insurgencies or communist dictators in the Third World throughout the Cold War. Joe Biden is almost always wrong. He has terrible instincts. His staff’s instincts are worse. Their political incentives are even worse. Yet most bizarrely of all, he seems supremely confident in his own abilities.

HH: What do you think former President and future President Donald Trump’s policy will be on the Israel-Hamas war?

TC: Well, first off, Hugh, I’ve told President Trump that at times, he is too modest when he talks about this war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine. He said it wouldn’t have happened on his watch. And I think it’s important to remember that he doesn’t have to use the conditional. He can say it didn’t happen on my watch, and it will not happen again on my watch, because Vladimir Putin, to put it very bluntly, was scared of what Donald Trump would do if he invaded Ukraine again. He invaded when Barack Obama was president. He invaded when Joe Biden was president. He didn’t do it when Donald Trump was president, in part because Donald Trump is the one that started arming the Ukrainians. Likewise, Iran did not unleash this region-wide attacks of terror against Israel from Gaza, missile attacks from the Houthis in the Red Sea, and now out into the Indian Ocean, pretty steady attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon into Israel. These things did not happen under Donald Trump. With Donald Trump, we had peace and stability, because he was a strong president and we were viewed as a strong nation. So when he is president, I am confident that Israel will have the full American backing to do what’s necessary to defend its people.

HH: Senator Cotton, I like to tell my Democratic friends that the most important difference between the former and future President Trump and current President Biden is that President Trump is not afraid of anything, and Joe Biden is afraid of everything, including our enemies abroad and his left-wing at home. Fair?

TC: I do think that’s fair. You know, when it comes to Vladimir Putin or Iran or Hamas, he’s like an elephant who has seen a mouse and jumped up on a table, ironically, since an elephant obviously is a thousand times the size of a mouse. And all it takes is the slightest threat of escalation for Joe Biden to either stand down himself, as he’s forced our sailors who are sitting ducks in the Red Sea to these missile and drones attacks do, or to pressure our friends in places like Israel and Ukraine to stand down.

HH: Now Senator, I want to close with this today, because I’ve got to take a couple calls here. But I want, I saw your Jonathan Karl interview. I played a lot of it. I believe Jonathan was the least interested in your answers I’ve ever seen an anchor. When I ask a question, I let the interviewee answer it at length. I’ll have to cut him off sometimes if they go a minute and a half. Was that unique in your experience among left-leaning journalists? And Jon is a man of the left. I mean, the mask is off. But he never let you answer a question.

TC: Oh, Hugh, I’m not sure it’s unique. That’s one reason why the three main networks, and MSNBC and CNN’s ratings have declined, and certainly declined among Republicans, because they don’t seem to be that interested in the other point of view. I do believe, Hugh, that the media is desperate not to cover these little Gazas, these disgusting cesspools of antisemitic hatred that have sprung up on campuses around the country, because they realize how toxic that is for their side, for the Democrats. And they want to do anything to stop covering it. So Jon asked me a question or two about it, because that was in the news last week, and I was in the news talking about that and taking action on it. But then he said he wanted to move on to 2024. And my point to him was we’ve been talking about 2024. These little Gazas on campus are a central issue in 2024, because they partly encapsulate the differences between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Joe Biden will not take action, for instance, to stop these protesters who have set up this disgusting, rat-infested little Gaza on George Washington, where they are defacing statues of President Washington with terrorist headdresses and spray paint. Donald Trump, like, say, those frat boys at UNC, will take the steps that are necessary to defend the American flag, to restore law and order, to exhibit strength at home just like he will abroad to make sure that law-abiding Americans, in this case, students who just want to study for final exams to say nothing of Jewish students who have been insulted and assaulted and harassed, can go about their business.

HH: So Senator, my last question. The two new affiliates are WZOE-AM1490 in the Illinois valley, and WLMD-FM104.7 in Western Illinois. They’re about 100-120 miles away from Chicago. That’s as close as I want to be to Chicago during the Democratic Convention. I think it’s going to be a replay of ’68, and a nightmare, particularly given the governance of that city. What do you think?

TC: Well, it certainly could be, Hugh. I mean, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can’t go out in public, for that matter, they really can’t go out in private to their tony fundraisers without these pro-Hamas sympathizers shouting them down. Now one difference between 2024 and 1968 is now, the federal government is in charge of security, which is to say Joe Biden’s administration. So I would suspect that Joe Biden’s administration is going to take draconian steps to ensure that these people don’t get within a country mile of the convention site, unlike in 1968 when it was the Chicago city government that was responsible for it. But you know, I’m not sure they’re going to be very helpful, either. You may have seen the news that the Chicago mayor will not allow the Chicago P.D. to go into the University of Chicago campus to clear out their little Gaza. So I think these protesters are certainly going to try these tactics in Chicago, but I would suspect that Joe Biden’s administration is going to use very aggressive tactics to keep them away from the convention, something, for instance, that yet again, they accuse their political opponents of doing, that they’re the ones who actually do it.

HH: Senator Tom Cotton, thank you for your time this morning. Always very generous, and I appreciate it. And do not fall back into your Celtic ways. Just stay with the Cavs tonight, Senator. Stay with the Cavs. Thank you.

End of interview.