75 Facts About Tom Cotton

1.

Thomas Bryant Cotton was born on May 13,1977 and is an American politician, attorney, and former military officer serving as the junior United States senator from Arkansas since 2015.

2.

Tom Cotton was elected as the US representative for Arkansas's 4th congressional district in 2012 and to the Senate at age 37 in 2014, defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor.

3.

Thomas Bryant Tom Cotton was born on May 13,1977, in Dardanelle, Arkansas.

4.

Tom Cotton's father, Thomas Leonard "Len" Cotton, was a district supervisor in the Arkansas Department of Health, and his mother, Avis Cotton, was a schoolteacher who later became principal of their district's middle school.

5.

Tom Cotton's family had lived in rural Arkansas for seven generations, and he grew up on his family's cattle farm.

6.

Tom Cotton was accepted to Harvard College after graduating from high school in 1995.

7.

Tom Cotton left in 1999, saying that he found academic life "too sedentary", and instead enrolled at Harvard Law School.

8.

On January 11,2005, Tom Cotton enlisted in the United States Army.

9.

Tom Cotton entered Officer Candidate School in March 2005 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in June.

10.

Tom Cotton completed the US Army Ranger Course, a 62-day small unit tactics and leadership program that earned him the Ranger tab, and Airborne School to earn the Parachutist Badge.

11.

In May 2006, Tom Cotton was deployed to Baghdad as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division.

12.

In December 2006 Tom Cotton was promoted to first lieutenant and reassigned to the 3d Infantry Regiment at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, as a platoon leader.

13.

From October 2008 to July 2009, Tom Cotton was deployed to eastern Afghanistan.

14.

In June 2006, while stationed in Iraq, Tom Cotton gained public attention after writing an open letter to the editor of The New York Times, asserting three journalists had violated "espionage laws" by publishing an article detailing a classified government program monitoring terrorists' finances.

15.

Tom Cotton accused the newspaper of having "gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis".

16.

Tom Cotton's claims circulated online and were reprinted in full elsewhere.

17.

In 2021, Salon reported that Tom Cotton falsely claimed in campaign ads and videos from 2011 to 2014 that he had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and earned a Bronze Star as a US Army Ranger even though he did not serve in the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment.

18.

Tom Cotton dismissed allegations of falsifying his military record as politically driven.

19.

Tom Cotton considered a run against incumbent Democratic US senator Blanche Lincoln in 2010 but declined due to lack of donors and believing it was premature.

20.

Tom Cotton later said the internet had matured since he wrote the article.

21.

Tom Cotton was supported by both the Tea Party movement and the Republican establishment.

22.

Tom Cotton was the second Republican since Reconstruction Era of the United States to represent the 4th district.

23.

On January 3,2013, Tom Cotton was sworn into the House of Representatives by Speaker John Boehner.

24.

Tom Cotton voted against the 2013 Farm Bill over concerns about waste and fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, voting later that month to strip funding from that program.

25.

Tom Cotton voted against the revised measure, the Agricultural Act of 2014, which expanded crop insurance and a price floor for rice farmers.

26.

Tom Cotton accused Obama of presenting a "false choice" between the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and war.

27.

Tom Cotton was criticized in some media outlets for underestimating what successful military action against Iran would entail.

28.

Tom Cotton was endorsed by the conservative Club for Growth PAC, Senator Marco Rubio, the National Federation of Independent Business, and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who campaigned for Tom Cotton.

29.

In January 2020,78-year-old Henry Edward Goodloe was sentenced to two years' probation for sending Tom Cotton a threatening letter and a package containing white powder.

30.

Tom Cotton was reelected, defeating Libertarian challenger Ricky Dale Harrington Jr.

31.

Tom Cotton specifically blocked the nominations of Butts and ambassador nominees to Sweden and Norway after the Secret Service leaked private information about a fellow member of Congress, although that issue was unrelated to those nominees.

32.

Tom Cotton eventually released his holds on the nominees to Sweden and Norway, but kept his hold on Butts's nomination.

33.

Butts told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that she had gone to see Tom Cotton about his objections to her nomination and said he had told her that because he knew that Obama and Butts were friends, it was a way to "inflict special pain on the president", Bruni said.

34.

Tom Cotton frequently met with Trump's staff during the transition period, and according to Steve Bannon, suggested John F Kelly as US Secretary of Homeland Security.

35.

Tom Cotton was the one most supportive of us, up front and behind the scenes, from the beginning.

36.

In early January 2021, Tom Cotton announced he would not support any attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election during the joint congressional certification of Electoral College results on January 6,2021.

37.

Tom Cotton was one of 18 Republican senators to vote for the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill that former President Donald Trump criticized.

38.

In November 2018, while arguing against a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill, Tom Cotton incorrectly said that there had been no hearings on the bill.

39.

Tom Cotton subsequently said that he was using the "colloquial" version of the phrase and cited examples of Democrats and the mainstream media using the phrase.

40.

Dozens of Times staff members sharply criticized the decision to publish Tom Cotton's article, calling its rhetoric dangerous.

41.

Tom Cotton criticized the Times for retracting his piece, saying, "The New York Times editorial page editor and owner defended it in public statements but then they totally surrendered to a woke child mob from their own newsroom that apparently gets triggered if they're presented with any opinion contrary to their own, as opposed to telling the woke children in their newsroom this is the workplace, not a social justice seminar on campus".

42.

In July 2020, Tom Cotton introduced the Saving American History Act of 2020, proposed legislation preventing the use of federal tax dollars for the teaching of The 1619 Project, an initiative of The New York Times.

43.

Tom Cotton was one of six Republican senators to vote against advancing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would allow the US Justice Department to review hate crimes related to COVID-19 and establish an online database.

44.

In January 2019, Tom Cotton was one of 31 Republican senators to cosponsor the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, a bill introduced by John Cornyn and Ted Cruz that would grant individuals with concealed carry privileges in their home state the right to exercise this right in any other state with concealed carry laws while concurrently abiding by that state's laws.

45.

Tom Cotton has an A rating from the National Rifle Association, which endorsed him in the 2014 election.

46.

Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan spoke at one podium arguing for its passage; Tom Cotton spoke at another arguing against it, even exchanging terse comments with Speaker Boehner.

47.

Tom Cotton supported Trump's 2017 Executive Order 13769 prohibiting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

48.

Tom Cotton reiterated on CBS's Face The Nation, "I certainly didn't hear what Senator Durbin has said repeatedly".

49.

In February 2021, in a speech at CPAC, Tom Cotton criticized the Democrats' and Joe Biden's immigration policies.

50.

Tom Cotton opposed the Affordable Care Act, saying in 2012 that "the first step is to repeal that law, which is offensive to a free society and a free people".

51.

In June 2013, Tom Cotton voted in favor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill to ban abortion after 20 or more weeks following fertilization.

52.

Tom Cotton has said that Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey were "wrongly decided as a constitutional matter" and that the legality of abortion should be up to politicians in the individual states.

53.

Tom Cotton was one of 183 co-sponsors of the version of the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act introduced in 2013.

54.

Tom Cotton preferred a solution that ended what he called the "federal-government monopoly on the student-lending business", referring to the provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that changed the way the federal government makes student loans.

55.

On January 6,2021, Tom Cotton released a statement repudiating the attack on the Capitol:.

56.

Tom Cotton subsequently repeated his earlier description of those involved as "insurrectionists" and said they should be brought to justice.

57.

On May 28,2021, Tom Cotton voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

58.

Tom Cotton said of the detainees in the camp, "every last one them can rot in hell, but as long as they don't do that they can rot in Guantanamo Bay".

59.

In July 2017, Tom Cotton voted in favor of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that grouped together sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea.

60.

In 2018, Tom Cotton was a cosponsor of the Countering the Chinese Government and Communist Party's Political Influence Operations Act, a bill introduced by Marco Rubio and Catherine Cortez Masto that would grant the US secretary of state and the director of national intelligence the authority to create an interagency task force with the purpose of examining attempts by China to influence the US and key allies.

61.

In February 2019, Tom Cotton was one of the group of Senate Republicans who signed a letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi requesting that Pelosi invite President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen to address a joint meeting of Congress.

62.

In May 2019, when asked about the impact of tariffs on farmers in Arkansas, Tom Cotton said there would be "some sacrifices on the part of Americans, I grant you that, but I would say that sacrifice is pretty minimal compared to the sacrifices that our soldiers make overseas that are fallen heroes that are laid to rest in Arlington make", and that farmers were willing to make sacrifices in order for the US to fend off against Chinese attempts to displace the US globally.

63.

In May 2019, Tom Cotton was a cosponsor of the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, a bipartisan bill reintroduced by Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin that was intended to disrupt China's consolidation or expansion of its claims of jurisdiction over both the sea and air space in disputed zones in the South China Sea.

64.

On January 28,2020, in the context of the emergence of COVID-19, Tom Cotton urged the Trump administration to halt commercial flights from China to the United States.

65.

Tom Cotton tweeted around March 2020: "we will hold accountable those who inflicted it on the world" for what it had done.

66.

In 2013, Tom Cotton introduced legislative language to prohibit trade with relatives of individuals subject to US sanctions against Iran.

67.

In March 2015, Tom Cotton wrote and sent a letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, signed by 47 of the Senate's 54 Republicans, that cast doubt on the Obama administration's authority to engage in nuclear-proliferation negotiations with Iran.

68.

Tom Cotton received extensive financial support from pro-Israel groups due to his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and for his hawkish stance toward Iran.

69.

Tom Cotton stated that Iran had not changed much since 1981 and called for Americans to avoid Iran and its borders as there were "many friendly countries in the region that you can visit where you'd be safer".

70.

Tom Cotton said there would be a "furious response" by the United States if there was any provocation from Iran.

71.

On March 13,2018, in an interview on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt's radio show, Tom Cotton said he expected Russian officials to "lie and deny" about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, an ex-Russian spy on British soil.

72.

Tom Cotton was the one most supportive of us, up front and behind the scenes, from the beginning.

73.

Tom Cotton has been called one of the leading voices of Trumpism.

74.

Some have argued that Tom Cotton could be the "heir" to the Trumpism wing of the Republican Party.

75.

In 2019, Tom Cotton published a book about the role of the Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, partly based on his service in that unit as an officer.