Senate Republicans are not merely attempting to delay or obstruct President Joe Biden’s nominees, they are holding them accountable for their own words, according to Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Newsmax TV.
Among the most troubling to Cotton were Attorney General-nominee Merrick Garland and Defense Undersecretary for Policy Colin Kahl.
“It’s not just that Judge Garland gave evasive answers at his public testimony,” Cotton told Thursday’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “As you say, he had more than a week to answer written questions and he used phrases like ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I’m not familiar,’ ‘I’m not aware,’ and so forth, more than 260 times in those written answers.
“You would think that if he wants our votes to be attorney general, he would take the time to provide answers to our questions. If he can’t take the time for us, then I’m not going to give back the time on the Senate floor.”
Cotton is among the Republican senators calling for a full debate of Garland’s nomination to lead the Biden Justice Department.
“We’re going to have a full and robust debate, just like the Democrats demanded for Bill Barr,” Cotton said. “And if it’s good enough for Bill Barr, it’s good enough for Merrick Garland.”
Cotton also took Kahl to task in his nomination hearing Thursday, calling out his anti-Republican and anti-Trump supporter tweets.
“Colin Kahl has a history of unhinged rants on social media and elsewhere, just people who have disagreements with him on public policy questions,” Cotton said. “It’s fine to disagree. Some of these questions are close calls.
“But to say, ‘the Republican Party is the party of ethnic cleansing’ or has ‘a death-cult fealty’ to President [Donald] Trump,” he continued, “it reflects a demeanor and an attitude and a temperament that is not fit to have the No. 3 position in the Department of Defense.”
Cotton rejected Kahl’s excuse of “getting swept away in these polarizing times.”
“If he gets swept away in the middle of the night reading news on his phone at home, what’s going to happen when Iran hijacks another American ship? Or China shoots down a fighter aircraft?”
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Source: Newmax
