Sen. Tom Cotton said Friday he shares some of Donald Trump's concerns about the United States' continuing participation in the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization, but he doesn't agree that spending should be cut.
"We used to split our costs 50-50 between the United States and Europe," the Arkansas Republican told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "Today, it's 70-30 between the U.S. and Europe."
But rather than simply cutting spending, Cotton said, he would encourage European allies to spend more on NATO, especially so the kinds of hybrid warfare that has been seen in Ukraine and Georgia wouldn't be repeated in eastern NATO partners like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and to help stop the types of attacks that have hit in Paris and Brussels.
Cotton, who met with Trump this week in Washington, said he does believe that the front-runner could be elected president, but then again, he believes any of the remaining three GOP candidates would make a better commander-in-chief than Hillary Clinton "who has not only been the architect for Barack Obama's foreign policy which has left the world aflame but also shown a casual disregard for the handling of sensitive national security secrets."
The senator also discussed the attacks in Brussels and Paris, pointing out that the Islamic State also was behind the San Bernardino attacks in the United States.
He also slammed President Barack Obama for being shown in Cuba just after the Brussels attacks.
"President Obama's job is to keep us safe, not to minimize the fear that Americans fear about terrorism," said Cotton. "This is not a mistake on President Obama's part, this is the deliberate policy. They think we have a disproportionate fear of terrorism in this country, even after Brussels and Paris and San Bernardino and they want to downplay that fear.
"President Obama goes around telling people more Americans die in bathtub falls than are killed by terrorists. It's that mentality we have to change and get on offense against the slate and if we don't want to see a Brussels style attack here."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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