Newly minted pacifist Tom Cotton is calling for calm and peace in the aftermath of an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this weekend.
Whatever the political or ideological differences among Americans today, “we settle those differences through political debates and through elections. We don’t settle them through violence,” Cotton said on Face The Nation Sunday morning. Cue the Joan Baez, I guess.
Cotton, if you’ll remember, is usually quite trigger happy at any opportunity to draw down on the libs. Most recently Cotton mused about hurling protesters against the genocide in Gaza over bridges, and running them over with cars. Before that, Cotton memorably called on the United States military to bomb protesters in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police.
That Cotton isn’t out for more blood today is notable. Maybe with so many other leading Republicans out there doing the job of blaming Democrats for a bullet shot at one of their own by one of their own, Cotton is freed up to put aside his standard robotic belligerence and cosplay as an empathetic human being. Or maybe the fact that the shooter was a young, white Republican male, armed with one of those assault rifles Republicans like Cotton are so fond of, he calculates that it would be pretty dumb to point fingers.