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Cotton Speaks in Support of Pompeo for Secretary of State

April 26, 2018

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday in support of Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state.

"In the secretary’s hands rest matters of the most sensitive, delicate, and consequential nature: affairs of war and—we always hope—peace. President Kennedy put it simply when he said, "Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us." That’s why presidents across the ages have filled the office of secretary of state with some of the most distinguished statesmen in our history, names like Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Clay, Webster, Marshall, Kissinger," Cotton said. "And now we will add the name of Mike Pompeo. Very soon, the Senate will confirm Mike to be our seventieth secretary of state. I strongly support his nomination, as I’ve made widely known in recent days."

The Senate is expected to vote and confirm Pompeo Thursday afternoon. Earlier this week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted in favor of Pompeo's nomination. The committee approved the nomination on a party-line vote, with all 11 Republicans backing him, nine Democrats opposing, and one Democrat, Chris Coons, voting "present" because of Senate procedural rules.

Cotton also noted Democrat's unusual opposition to Pompeo.

Unfortunately, many Democratic senators are opposing Mike’s nomination, and they’ve given their reasons. But I have to say, those reasons don’t hold up very well under scrutiny. Some say Mike is averse to diplomacy. In fact, he simply knows that diplomacy is most effective when it’s backed with a credible military threat As Frederick the Great said, diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments. But he also knows that some situations may not be susceptible to diplomatic solutions, no matter how much one might wish it so. That’s a fact of life; it’s not a reason to oppose Mike’s nomination. And I would add that he recently demonstrated his commitment to diplomacy by meeting with Kim Jong Un to lay the groundwork for the president’s upcoming summit. It’s hard to think of a regime worse than North Korea. But Mike was willing to sit down with Kim to try to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. That should show us all, definitively, that he’s committed to diplomacy.

Others say they’re opposing Mike because they disagree with him on social issues. Here, I would simply note that most Republicans surely disagreed with Hillary Clinton and John Kerry’s views on these issues, yet they still voted to confirm them. And for that matter, Hillary Clinton opposed same-sex marriage when the Democrats voted to confirm her back in 2009. So it hardly seems fair to hold Mike Pompeo to a different standard. Still others oppose Mike’s nomination because he refused to say he would resign if President Trump fired special counsel Robert Mueller. I have to say, that’s quite a stretch for a secretary of state nomination. This isn’t the Department of Justice. And on the merits, I would ask, do they think it would’ve been a good idea for Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger to resign in 1973 or 1974? Would it help or hurt America to have our top diplomat suddenly leave the world stage at a time of domestic turmoil? And if that is to be the standard, have those Democrats asked Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis that question? I bet they haven’t.

Published under: Mike Pompeo , Tom Cotton