Donald Trump’s stooge Tom Cotton goes completely off the rails
Senator Tom Cotton is a military veteran and a Harvard trained lawyer, but like his fellow Harvard alum, Kayleigh McEnany, being able to attend a high-falutin’ school does not guarantee awareness and sense.
Cotton has often said things that are extremist, even within the context of his own Republican Party. Cotton recently tried to ban the teaching of the 1619 Project in schools, with his Saving American History Act of 2020, which his office announced “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts. Schools that teach the 1619 Project would also be ineligible for federal professional-development grants.”
Cotton also went on an additional attack against the New York Times project, named after the first year slaves were imported to America. The quote from Cotton over the weekend was: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
When the media reported the above quote, Tom Cotton said the “fake news” had once again distorted what he said. Read the quote as it is, and however you parse, he states it was “as the Founding Fathers said” and he does not dispute that or explain why it was a necessary evil.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.