Thread by @hughhewitt

“HH: Do you, @SenTomCottom, believe that @realDonaldTrump is a Russian mole?
TC: (laughing) No, Hugh, I do not.
HH: (laughing)
TC: And I think some of these stories say more about the newspapers that are printing them, or the officials in the administration opposed to

the @POTUS who are leaking them. You know, Hugh, I’ll say, as I’ve told you before, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been examining in great detail what happened in the 2016 Election, and that inquiry continues.

But as many Democrats on that committee have said, there’s been no evidence that demonstrates any kind of collusion between the President or his campaign and the Russian government or their intelligence services.

I’d further say that if you take a look at what the President has done over the last two years to Russia and its interests, it’s kind of a strange claim to make. I mean, for years, we asked the Obama administration to provide defensive weapons to Ukraine,

or get tough on Europe’s dependence on energy in Russia, or to encourage NATO, which is explicitly designed to stop Russian encroachment in Europe, to spend more money on their common defenses, to spend more money on our defense.

All those things are objectively contrary to the interests of the Kremlin.
HH: And I would add that when the Russian mercenaries came over the hill in Syria, the American military had standing orders that Mattis ordered executed through Dunford, and they were wiped out.

And I would add that the President is opposed to the Russian pipeline to Germany. I mean, it doesn’t, there isn’t an iota of evidence of this. But the Manchurian candidate narrative has taken hold when in fact we ought to be looking at the Seven Days in May narrative

based on another story that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trump in May of 2017. Were you shocked by that, Senator Cotton?
TC: Well, I won’t necessarily credit a report that appeared in such an anti-Trump news source, Hugh.

I will simply say that if it is true, it may say more about Andy McCabe, a notorious partisan who was fired from his job and is now under investigation for lying to government officials, than it says about the President.” hughhewitt.com/senator-tom-co…