Sen. Tom Cotton Eyed Again for CIA Chief

Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican close to President Donald Trump, is once again being considered to run the CIA, Axios reported Monday.

The White House is thinking of nominating Mike Pompeo, the current director of Central Intelligence, to serve as secretary of state and replacing him with the 40-year-old Harvard law school graduate and veteran of the Armys 101st Airborne, according to Axios.

"Cotton is one of the few senators with an easy relationship with Trump, talking to him a few times a week, giving him advice about top jobs (that Trump has taken), and planting the seed for the Iran policy announced Friday," wrote Axios founder Mike Allen, a longtime Washington insider.

Of course, the whole "chess move," as he described it, depends on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson resigning after what other Washington sources described as a tempestuous relationship with Trump. 

Cotton developed a special relationship with Trump during the presidential transition when he was first considered as a CIA director. Since Trump took office, Cotton has been a close adviser in the Senate, steering the president toward "discipline and conservative policy in the face of 140-character headwinds," The New York Time reported.

If Cotton moves to the CIA and Pompeo to the State Department, they would join retired Marine generals James Mattis, the secretary of defense, and John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, in a "quartet of serious intellectuals and warriors in the big four jobs," Axios reported.

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