Fox News host Shannon Bream put Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on the spot for his and others in the GOP’s fear of failed former president Donald Trump and the way he is “brainwashing” Republicans.
On Fox News Sunday, Bream referenced a recent report from Politico about how Trump had successfully convinced congressional Republicans to kill bipartisan legislation dealing with the border.
“So President Biden not only gets to blame you guys about the border, but he gets to blame President Trump, who he says tanked this whole deal, saying he wants to keep it alive as a campaign issue and that basically, he’s running the GOP at this point,” Bream began.
“Politico says this, quote, it’s devastating Trump seizes unmatched control over GOP, talking a quote there from an analyst, and saying this, he’s got a stronghold, quoting Amy Tarkanian, former chair of the Nevada Republican Party.”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Bream said, quoting a GOP strategist. “It’s completely mind-boggling to me, the type of brainwashing that has been done.”
“Critics say there’s no check on him within the GOP,” she added. “You’re all afraid of him. You’ve endorsed him. What do you make of this argument that he’s essentially taken away your autonomy as a senator?”
Cotton tried to suggest that he wasn’t merely a puppet for Trump and the MAGA movement, but his denial wasn’t very convincing.
“Not all, Shannon,” he responded. “What President Trump saw about this bill is what most Arkansans saw about it, what all but four Republican senators saw, which is that it does not solve the problem.”
“What I want to do, what most Republican senators want to do, what President Trump wants to do is stop the border crisis,” he continued. “And now we can see, with Joe Biden ideologically invested in open borders, the way to stop that crisis is to elect President Trump this fall.”
“He did it once. He can do it again.”
But did Trump actually stop the border crisis, as Cotton suggests? A new report from Semafor suggests he didn’t, and the numbers are not on Trump’s side.
During its final two years, Trump’s administration released 713,000 immigrants into the US, or 52% of all people crossing the border, per a recent Cato Institute analysis. By comparison, the Biden administration released 49% of migrants entering between ports of entry in the first two years, totaling 2.5 million.
Tom Cotton and 99.9% all Republicans have turned the GOP over to Trump and the MAGA extremists. Are they brainwashed, or are they merely showing their true colors now that Trump has made it acceptable to be a bigot if you’re a member of his party?
