Tom Cotton to Compare Reagan and Trump in Speech on Future of the GOP

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Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is expected to argue in a high-profile speech Monday evening that presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump share common roots in the Republican Party and that those who suggest the GOP must pick a path that embraces one or the other are wrong.

Mr. Cotton, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, is the latest Republican invited to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California as part of a speakers series on the party’s future following its loss of the White House, Senate and House during Mr. Trump’s tenure in office.

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“Reagan understood what all Republicans should: We are elected to protect the American people and their prosperity and their freedom,” Mr. Cotton said in an interview ahead of his speech. “Both President Reagan and President Trump, who many people say represent these polar opposites between which we must choose, stood in that tradition.”

The two former presidents share some similarities: They both entered politics after careers in entertainment, were Democrats before becoming Republicans and won the GOP nomination after overcoming opposition from some in the party establishment. They also advanced starkly different trade and immigration policies, and Mr. Reagan was always the optimist, while Mr. Trump often paints the US as divided and headed in the wrong direction.

President Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump at a White House reception in 1987. The two former presidents share some similarities. Photo: Ronald Reagan Library.

Mr. Cotton described the party’s Reagan-Trump tradition as Jacksonian, a reference that goes back to a president known for his populist views whom advisers portrayed as a role model for Mr. Trump.

“It is the heart of the Republican Party today,” said Mr. Cotton, who often provided counsel to Mr. Trump while he was in the White House. “Republicans are the party of the common man. We stand for law and order, military strength, good jobs, high wages and sanity in our culture wars. ”

Mr. Cotton, who has long been hawkish on defense and foreign policy issues, will criticize President Biden for the war that has broken out in Ukraine.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin “wagered that if the American president wouldn’t stand up to a depraved gang of seventh-century savages in Afghanistan, there was no way he would stand up to Russia,” he will say, according to speech excerpts shared in advance. “After all, Joe Biden had signaled weakness, conciliation and appeasement to Putin from the very beginning.”

Asked in the interview whether he agreed with Mr. Trump’s assessment of Mr. Putin as smart, Mr. Cotton declined to do so. “He’s a ruthless dictator and he always has been, and he is responsible for this naked, unprovoked war of aggression,” he said.

Mr. Cotton said he would support a bipartisan effort in Congress to ban Russian oil imports into the US, something the Biden administration has said it is considering, but no decision has been made.

“We should have done this years ago,” he said. “They don’t provide that much of our oil, but they provide enough that we’re still providing them tens of millions of dollars since this war began to fund their government and therefore their war machine.”

As a corollary to cutting off Russian oil, Mr. Cotton also called on the US to “significantly increase the production of American oil” and reverse Mr. Biden’s “foolhardy, naive policies like banning new drilling leases on federal lands.”

Ammar Moussa, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, criticized Mr. Cotton for failing to condemn Mr. Trump’s past praise of Mr. Putin. “He might want to pretend he’s taking the Republican Party in a new direction, but his loyalty lies with Donald Trump,” Mr. Moussa said.

Mr. Cotton is among a small group of ambitious Republican senators in their 40s or early 50s — along with Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri — believed to be laying the groundwork for possible presidential bids in 2024.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who says his first election focus is 2022, attended a Republican fundraiser in Sioux Center, Iowa, in June. Photo: KC McGinnis for The Wall Street Journal

A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, Mr. Cotton clerked on an appeals court and worked for law firms before joining the Army in 2005, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also a consultant with McKinsey & Co. before being elected to the House in 2012 and the Senate in 2014.

While Mr. Cotton is perhaps best known for his foreign policy views, his speech is expected to also focus heavily on battling crime, a call for a parent-centered reform of the educational system, ending coronavirus mandates and his skepticism of free trade.

“Our party must reject the ideology of globalism, which claims that wide-open borders and wide-open markets are the path to prosperity for all,” he is expected to say, in contrast to Mr. Reagan’s embrace of free trade. “There is no right of free movement of a foreign people or foreign products into our nation.”

Mr. Cotton will call for a ban on US investment in strategic Chinese industries and greater scrutiny of Chinese investment in the US “Free trade isn’t free unless it flows both ways,” he is expected to say. “China isn’t engaged in free trade, not even close, and therefore it’s not entitled to preferential market access.”

He is also expected to call on the GOP to be tougher on crime and criticize Mr. Trump’s support for and 2018 signature on the First Step Act, which changed sentencing guidelines for federal inmates and allows for early release of some convicted of nonviolent crimes.

“No piece of legislation did more harm to our status as the party of public safety than the First Step Act,” Mr. Cotton is expected to say. “Donald Trump’s support for the First Step Act was the worst mistake of his administration.”

Asked about his 2024 ambitions, Mr. Cotton said he is focused on more immediate matters. “When I turn my attention down the road towards elections, it will indeed first be to 2022,” he said. “Once that election is over, we can move on to the next election.”

A year after pro-Trump rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol, lawmakers and Americans remain divided over what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and who is to blame. WSJ journalists look at changes in Congress since then, and what it could mean for the 2022 midterm elections. Photos: Getty Images

Write to John McCormick at [email protected]

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