Cotton potential choice for 2024

WASHINGTON — Freshman Sen. Tom Cotton has risen to the ranks of potential 2024 Republican presidential contenders by making all the right enemies. By lining up behind President Donald Trump’s lawand-order recipe for controlling civic unrest, he’s making even more.

“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers,” the 43-year-old Arkansan wrote last week in a New York Times opinion column.

That infuriated Democrats and liberals, whom his column thumped by calling protests rocking cities “carnivals for the thrillseeking rich as well as other criminal elements.”

For good measure, Cotton lambasted the Times — a favorite conservative target — after it released a subsequent statement saying Cotton’s essay did not meet its standards. Times employees had rebelled, expressing shame and anger about the piece.

“If the @nytimes allows woke ‘journalists’ to bully it into submission, why should any reader trust that the reporting by the @nytimes is fair and objective?” Cotton tweeted Friday.

Seldom acknowledging reporters’ questions as he strides through Capitol hallways, Cotton is known for bellicose stances on issues that thrill Trump’s conservative supporters. He’s been a hard-liner on immigration, Iran and most recently China, suggesting the coronavirus may have originated in one of that country’s secret labs.

Cotton’s office declined to make him available for this article.