Senator Tom Cotton
speaker
121 appearances
6 recordings
3 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 3 Jun
Senator Tom Cotton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So this would be a huge accomplishment for President Trump and a great advance for the sake of peace and prosperity for Americans.
had to step out for a few other commitments, and I can't get back and be here for fewer than two minutes without hearing the Democrats talk about illegal orders.
So, General Donovan, I would like to ask you, have you ever received an illegal order?
No, Senator.
And you're a pretty high-speed Marine, as I understand it.
You've been out on the front a lot in your lifetime.
So from the time you were Lieutenant Donovan to the time now where you've got three stars and you're about to add a fourth, no one has ever given you an illegal order.
No, Senator.
Well, it seems to me that our military does a very good job of training our troops from the time they enlist as privates or the time they commission as lieutenants all the way up to your level and to the commander-in-chief not to issue illegal orders.
There's, you know, there's nothing we can do at this point.
Trump has done all he can to minimize it, but there's nothing else he can do.
The Trump administration has done its best to try to minimize these hardships, but ultimately it starts to run out of funds and run up against the bounds of law, and there's really nothing more they can do.
Ben, China's ultimate goal is to replace America as the world's dominant economic and military superpower and to call the shots in the world, make everyone dance to their tune. They've been open about this at times like during President Trump's first term on a state visit.
telling his senior aides that they view a future in which America is basically a low cost commodity exporter to China that will provide them cheap oil and cheap agricultural products and that's about it. And that's why you've seen them undertake this breathtaking military buildup over the last 25 years.
So they now have the world's largest military by far and the second most technologically capable military after ours. That's why they take such aggressive economic actions to try to benefit their companies and try to harm our companies. and why they're so aggressive towards Taiwan, which is really the linchpin of China's strategy.
They know that they can't achieve their goals without taking Taiwan. But if they take Taiwan, they're on the precipice of achieving those goals.
Both would be very worrisome. Any kind of conflict over Taiwan would be devastating, Ben. It would probably lead to an immediate global depression that would wipe out the life savings of many Americans in the stock market, lead to mass unemployment, shortages on the shelves of American stores.
And part of that reason, as you say, is that Taiwan is the source of more than 60% of all global semiconductor manufacturing, more than 90% of advanced semiconductor manufacturing. It's also that you could expect a complete breakdown of economic ties between China and the United States and the West.
Unfortunately, we've allowed those ties to grow very deep and therefore we're very dependent on China. So even if there were a conflict that were inconclusive, that reached a stalemate, you would still see, again, an almost immediate global depression that would be devastating for Americans.
That's why the only way to prevail in a conflict with Taiwan is to prevent it from happening in the first place, to be strong and confident in the defense of a democratic partner and make it clear to communist China, as we have for a long time, that we will not tolerate any unilateral attempts to invade and annex Taiwan to the mainland.
Showing 81–100 of 121 · page 5 of 7
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