YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Cotton

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76
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2017-06-05
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2017-06-05
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  1. “In my platoon, they did, not in my company or battalion, unfortunately. In my platoon, though, we came back and didn't have any serious wounds while I was there. By the time I was there in 2006, the enemy had developed tactics and techniques and procedures in fighting that usually meant you weren't going to have protracted battles. Like, you know, there was, I mean, anytime you're in a firefight, it seems very protracted. But the kind of hours long battles that you might have seen set Combat Outpost Keating that Clint Romachet won the Medal of Honor 4 and that he has a new book about what was pretty rare in Baghdad at the time. The enemy knew that because of our superior firepower and mobility that they couldn't stand and fight us. So the most common kind of enemy technique was roadside bombs, IEDs, or sniper fire. So we certainly got exposed to our share of that.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I was very fortunate in the army that I got to do exactly what I wanted to do. Change my plans dramatically, obviously. I completed school and practiced for a couple years to pay off my loans. But then I joined and I joined to be an infantry officer on Lead Platoon in combat. And that's what I got to do within barely a year and a half of being in the Army. A lot of people joined to do those things and they don't have that opportunity. And I did. And the hardest job you could have leading 40 men in combat when there's bad guys all around you trying to kill you and try to kill your men. But rewarding and inspiring and just incredibly great privilege to be able to fight for a free country alongside citizens.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Wasn't going well. The war was spiraling out of control and continued for a couple more years. It was when Pat Tillman was killed, someone else who had left a pretty good job to go find on the front lines. So in addition to what he thought I was leaving behind in my professional life, he was obviously very concerned, as was my mother, about the safety of their son, as any parent would be.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Just thought I'd gone to Harvard and Harvard Law School and got this fancy education what he had wanted me and my sister to always do, not necessarily be a lawyer, but go on to get a good degree and become professionals, a good work in office and their air conditioning the way so many people don't have the good fortune to do so, especially in rural Arkansas. And then I was going to give all that up to go be an infantryman. And in particular in 2004, that was the time when”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Glorify combat. He didn't spend a lot of time reminiscing about his time in the army. But when timing was appropriate, he would bring up lessons or memories from it. Like I said, being in the woodline when it's rainy and you can smell the foliage and helicopters coming over, I'm sure that would bring back a memory of Vietnam. Or, you know, when we're getting ready to go out, you know, to deer camp, you know, you go into the living room and everything is laid out on the floor, you know, in a dressed right dress fashion. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but that was a skill that he learned in the army. And he'd point out how you learn these things in the Army and so forth. Now, he later said when I joined the Army, which he very much opposed, that he felt like God was punishing him for what he had done to his father in 1968.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, it was tough fighting. So he was in Vietnam from the summer of 69 to the summer of 70. And, you know, Nixon had campaigned in 1968 in part on bringing the Vietnam War to an end. So I think some people thought the fighting would wind down quickly as opposed to becoming more intense. And he was out in the jungle for at least half of the time he was in Vietnam. And sometimes he was out walking point for the infantry squad. So it was tough fighting. I mean, it was tougher, I'd say, than what I personally faced in Iraq or Afghanistan. I mean, most veterans look back on the previous war and think, you know, we've got it bad now, but at least we didn't have it like that, I'm sure. Those guys in Vietnam said the same thing about Korea, said the same thing about World War II. But it was tough fighting. He didn't, you know, when I was growing up, he didn't.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “My father would talk a lot about Vietnam, especially when we are on the farm. We grew up on this cattle farm. And from the time I was five or six, I was the farmhand. My mother was able to go home, thankfully, for her. All the time, you know, he just, you know, would be in the woods. It might be raining and helicopter would fly over and he'd talk about reminding him from Vietnam. What was the experience?”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Not no, that certainly wasn't part of a plan. I left my law practice and joined the Army because of the 9-11 attacks. But when I was in high school, we had a very popular and big junior RTC program. And the retired lieutenant colonel and E7 there were both Vietnam veterans. So I certainly learned a lot from them as well. I think they were both appalled by what had happened in Mogadishu that we committed to half measures. as opposed to just saying this is not our fight or going all in on it. But”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Two years, so he did a little less than a year training, and then his one year in Vietnam as an inframan. And then came back to the United States.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It was. Yeah. So my dad was an infantryman in Vietnam. He got out of college in 1967 when you could roll one deferment into another. He'd always thought, I think, that he wanted to be a coach, wanted to coach football. So he became a high school coach and teacher, realized that wasn't his calling after all after he spent a year dealing with high schoolers. And so he decided in the spring of 1968 that he didn't want to stay in a job just because it had to defer it, as so many people did back in those days and just do his duty. So he decided, first he was going to join the Marine Corps, and then my grandfather had been the Navy in World War II and seen what Marines faced then and threatened to disown him if he joined the Marines, which I've never really figured out why that was effective threats since he didn't really have any inheritance to disown him from. But he ended up joining the Army instead and did about”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, also, I mean, he'd campaign on a middle class tax cut and didn't deliver on that. And then there were some other parts of that that didn't become law, you know, the famous BTU tax the House voted on, the Senate never did. That just didn't seem very sensible to me at the time. Again, I was 16 years old. I didn't have a nuanced and sophisticated economic examination of them. It just didn't seem like the right course of action at the time. The Battle of Mogadishu stuck out more clearly to me, though. I mean, that was simpler, more elemental.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “The two big things I remember where the tax increase is, you know, having campaigned on a middle class tax cut, and especially the Battle of Mogadishu after the Black Hawk Down scenario and withdrawing from Mogadishu. I was in a junior RTC program at the time. I had both of the men who ran that program, Lieutenant Colonel and the E7 were Vietnam bet as my dad was. And it was just pretty appalling to them. to me listening to them that you commit troops to such an occasion with half measures. Either you go all in or do nothing at all.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So in 1992 I was fifteen and I started reading the news. I don't know if that's because I was in history class finally and I was just interested in events or if it's because Bill Clinton was running for office. But I read the Democrat Gazette front page. Again, I didn't have a Parson background. I didn't have political view. I was just kind of astonished that my governor was running for president and got elected president and was president. Big deal in Arkansas. Very big deal. And then in 1993, as I watched his first year in office, I realized like, wow, I can't believe my governor is doing these things as president. I must be a Republican.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “You know, I learned a lot of the things at the point that you've made in your book or in your comments that when you're in campaigns, you have to speak to the common concerns of the voters in a place like Arkansas. Those concerns are making ends meet, being able to pay the bills at the end of the month and put clothes on your kids' back and food on their table. Oftentimes, especially today, is certain communities in New York and Washington and Silicon Valley get more divorced from that common experience, people forget about that. They forget that an extra 10 bucks on the gas bill or the electricity bill or a few extra bucks on taxes makes a big difference. I mean, and you've written about that in your campaign or healthcare with President Obama. Those common basic concerns of day-to-day life really make a difference to most voters. And if you're blessed to not have those concerns, the way a lot of”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “But they both grew up in rural Arkansas around people who work with their hands and work on their feet. Mike Huckabee had the added perspective of being a Baptist preacher and having to deal with all the problems that any preacher has to deal with. But I think that gave both of them the kind of common touch and the feel on the campaign trail that made them so successful, that helped make Bill Clinton president and came close to making Mike Huckabee our Republican nominee in 2008.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Bill Clinton grew up more in hot springs and in hope. It doesn't sound as good. And the campaign video. But after about six months of his life, I still believe in a place called Hot.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, he was a really great politician, you know, probably one of the best on the campaign trail. Interestingly, I think another great politician came from Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, incredibly skilled, gifted campaigner and communicator.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, he was. I mean, I guess I didn't know that there was something someone could be governor other than Bill Clinton until he got elected president, but he was elected attorney general a few months before I was born, then governor about a year after I was born, and except for a two-year period in the early 1980s, who's either governor or president for my entire life until I was 24. And again, all those races are primarily about the primary in those days. But he'd come to our home county, Yale County a lot. He'd be at the Yale County Fair. There's pictures of me in my Arkansas razorback shirt. I'm four years old with my sister with Bill Clinton standing behind us, much younger Bill Clinton. He was like a predator with a lot more politics.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “On the farm from the time I was five, I had to try to earn my own keep, taught traditional upbringing about differences between right and wrong and personal responsibility and individual initiative and so forth.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “All Democrats, that's pretty much everyone was in those days. And to this day, there's a lot of counties in Arkansas where if you want to vote for your county judge or your sheriff or your JP, you have to vote in the Democratic primary. That's changing to a degree, but it's still the case in many counties. That said, they were all very conservative too. I didn't grow up in a political family. My father was very civic-minded. He coached Little League. He helped get lights for the field. He's in the Rotary Club. He's been the voice of Dardnell Sand Lizard football for 30 years now. But not politically active. No bumper stickers, no yard signs, in part because all politics was Democratic Party primary politics. So it was mostly personality-based. Didn't want to offend the other person. I didn't grow up in a political household, a conservative in the sense of like a William F. Buckley, conservative movement household, but it was a very conservative household in the sense of a traditional household. Like I had to go work.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “My mother's family had been in eastern Arkansas in a similar community, and they had met at the University of Arkansas. But I had a grandmother and a great aunt there. And both of those my great-aunt didn't have any children or grandchildren of her own. So we were kind of like her children and grandchildren, spent summer months with them. You know, you get on your bike in the morning. They could turn you out and be confident you'd make it back safe in the evening. And if you did anything wrong during the day that your neighbors or friends or church members or what have you would report back to you. You figured that out pretty quickly as well. And my parents are just great salt of the earth people. My father's very significant. Well, Democrats.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, suburban Darnell, unincorporated county land. My father's never had a vote for mayor in his life. And it was kind of a very idyllic upbringing.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I grew up in a very rural setting in Dardanelle, actually just outside Dardanelle, a small cattle farm. My parents still live in the farm.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I overcame that problem. Mother's love is a great thing, and I see that with my mom and me, but I see it now with my wife and my kids.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Not in particular. I mean, I remember having it and struggling and sometimes being frustrated. Usually my parents who couldn't understand me at the time. But I didn't get mocked or teased on the playground about it. My mom never likes to joke that he couldn't talk till I was three and look at him now.”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I did, yeah. So apparently I didn't speak until I was about three years old, which obviously don't remember, but my sister reminds me of. And I can remember going into elementary school second or third grade. Other kids would go out on the playground and play around in the jungle gym, the monkey bars, and I'd be in class working with a speech therapist from the school, learn how to pronounce words”

    2017-06-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 153 - Sen. Tom Cotton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source