Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., slammed Vice President Harris as “naive” on Iran and blasted the Democratic presidential candidate for not being tough on Hamas.
Cotton, who serves on the Senate Intelligence, Armed Services and Judiciary Committees, said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that Harris’ policy toward Israel over the past 10 months alone is “just an example of how she’s unprepared to be the commander in chief.”
“She immediately took at face value Hamas’ claims about the number of people killed and what they were doing,” Cotton said. The death toll in Gaza is reported by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties.
“Israel has to strike on occasion at places like hospitals and schools because Hamas uses them for command and control or to fire mortars and rockets,” Cotton said. “There are civilian casualties in Gaza, no doubt, but those are solely the responsibility of Hamas, not Israel. Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden, though, have put more pressure on Israel than they put on Hamas from the very beginning.”
The senator also condemned how Harris, who as vice president presides over the Senate, joined the approximately 128 Democratic members of Congress in skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to both chambers last month. Harris did have a separate closed-door meeting with Netanyahu at her office on the White House grounds while he was in Washington, D.C.
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Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign rally at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas on Aug. 10, 2024. (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)
“She refused to preside over the joint session, her only constitutional duty as president of the Senate, she refused to have a meeting in public with him, and she came out and again blamed Israel for the civilian casualties in Gaza, only emboldening Iran and Iranian-backed terrorists,” Cotton said. “And what did you have two days later, Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed terrorist, shot in rockets to Israel and blew up children playing ball at a playground.
“Kamala Harris is naïve, and she’s not prepared to be the commander in chief,” he added.
After her private meeting with Netanyahu, Harris did say Israel has every right to defend itself against terrorist factions.
“Is that not strong enough for you?” Fox News host Shannon Bream asked Cotton.
Sen. Tom Cotton accuses Kamala Harris of being “naive” on Iran. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Well, she says it all the time like Joe Biden does, and then she immediately says ‘but.’ And usually, Shannon, when a politician says ‘but,’ what matters is what comes after the ‘but,’ not what came before it,” Cotton said.
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“And what comes after the ‘but’ with Kamala Harris is always implying that Israel is responsible for all the civilian suffering in Gaza, not Hamas, that Israel is the one being provocative when it’s waging a defensive war after the October 7 atrocity and that Israel is the one that should pull in its horns, as opposed to supporting Israel and standing strong against Iran and Iranian-backed terrorist throughout the region,” he said.
Cotton also ripped Harris over her handling of being interrupted by anti-Israel protesters.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, during a campaign rally at the Thomas and Mack Center, University of Nevada in Las Vegas on Aug. 10, 2024. (Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images)
“She’s been interrupted twice by pro-Hamas radicals. The first time she accused them of helping Donald Trump get elected. Not telling them they were demented for supporting terrorists, not telling them that the United States stands with Israel, the victim of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, but that they might help Donald Trump get elected,” Cotton said. “Apparently, though, that was too tough even for her and her campaign because when she was interrupted next, she literally had a script in front of her. She had a piece of paper that she started reading from in which she sympathized with these pro-Hamas radicals.
“She said, ‘I hear you. I hear your voice. We need a cease-fire immediately,’” Cotton recalled. “Rather than saying that we need a cease-fire immediately, she should have been saying, like Joe Biden should have said from the beginning, we need an Israeli victory immediately.”
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The senator applauded how Israel has handled the war, “despite the constraints that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have put on them, despite the fact that they’re operating under a significant arms embargo, which Kamala Harris won’t even say that she would worsen if she becomes elected president.”
Cotton added that former President Trump understood that “we cannot have peaceful stable relations in the Middle East with daylight between the United States and Israel and our Arab partners.”
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