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Transcript: Sen. Tom Cotton on “Face the Nation,” May 12, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, that aired on May 12, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re back now with Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton. Senator, welcome back to the program.
SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): Thank you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You just heard Secretary Blinken explain the administration’s policy. He says Hamas absolutely does not abide by international law, Israel is inconsistent with international humanitarian law. But he stopped short of saying they’re violating weapons sharing agreements. Does this make sense to you?
SEN. COTTON: No, it doesn’t make any sense at all, Margaret, it sounds like a bunch of weaselly, mealy-mouthed politics. He said it’s “reasonable to assess”, he said that like three or four times, it’s like he was coached to say that, as if it was some magic talisman to help them walk the political line they want between the pro-Hamas wing of their party and the vast pro-Israel majority of the American people. The report that they put out Friday night, after news deadlines passed, was very clear. There is no evidence that Israel is violating international law. All civilian casualties in Gaza are solely the responsibility of Hamas. In fact, Israel’s probably doing more than any military in history to avoid civilian casualties.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, actually, it says, the U.S. intelligence community notes security forces in Israel “have inflicted harm on civilians in military or security operations potentially using U.S. provided equipment.” U.S. assesses Israel “could do more to avoid civilian harm”. But it doesn’t say they’re not doing it. It says they can’t for some reason, come to a clear conclusion–
SEN. COTTON: It says- Secretary Blinken’s own- no, Secretary Blinken’s own report says there’s no evidence, that they can’t reach that conclusion. Ben Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agrees that the report says there is no evidence. In fact, he also says that Joe Biden was wrong to impose this de facto arms embargo on Israel. Again, Israel is doing more than any military in history, in all likelihood, to prevent civilian casualties. If Hamas did not hide behind and under civilians, there would no- there would not be civilian casualties. For that matter, if Hamas simply surrendered and turned over all these hostages, there would be no more civilian suffering in Gaza.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Which is what President Biden says as well. But I mean, I know you’re a lawyer, you went to Harvard Law, you were an army officer, you deployed to Iraq, you deployed to Afghanistan. It has to trouble you when the Israeli Prime Minister says himself that they killed more civilians than terrorists. Thousands more civilians than terrorists.
SEN. COTTON: It troubles me deeply that Hamas is using those civilians as human shields, because that is their strategy. Remember, Margaret, remember–
MARGARET BRENNAN: So should U.S.- but- but to that point, though, because the United States provides billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, should it have a say in how those weapons are used? Because the- the needle Blinken seemed to be trying to thread here was to say it was very specifically tailored in terms of withholding these large bombs, the 3500 bombs.
SEN. COTTON: Well, the reason Israel needs these larger bombs is because Hamas has buried tunnels, or they’re holding hostages, and where its leaders are holed up, deeply underground. They’re also potentially delaying the kits that allow the so-called dumb bombs to become smart precision bombs.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The JDAM kits that they’re reviewing.
SEN. COTTON: And- and apparently- and apparently based on reports this morning, the administration even says they’re withholding intelligence about the location of senior Hamas leaders and therefore, hostages, to include potentially American hostages, from Israel, to try to force Israel not to go into Rafah. Think about that, they’re–
MARGARET BRENNAN: The White House denies that, and John Kirby briefed the other day that the U.S. is sharing intelligence, including the location of Yahya Sinwar, who has not been killed in the seven months of this war.
SEN. COTTON: It was in the Washington Post with- with four officials familiar with it. The Washington Post is like the message board for this administration and the Democratic Party.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You believe that the intelligence community is withholding information from the Israeli military?
(CROSSTALK)
SEN. COTTON: I- I believe- I believe that Joe Biden is willing to do that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you have any evidence of that?
SEN. COTTON: I mean, he’s imposed- he’s imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel and sanctions on Israelis. In the meantime–
MARGARET BRENNAN: They’re sending weapons this weekend, that’s not an arms embargo.
SEN. COTTON: In the meantime- he just said last week that he’s not going to send offensive weapons. We have no idea what he’s going to withhold.
(END CROSSTALK)
MARGARET BRENNAN: He- that was, as- as we just exchanged with- with Secretary Blinken, not a very clear statement in that CNN interview. Democrats have said that. But what Blinken said there was it was just that one single shipment. You’re saying you do not believe the Secretary of State when he says that?
SEN. COTTON: Margaret, in March of 2022, Tony Blinken came on your show, this very show, and said the United States would be perfectly fine to see fighter jets sent to Ukraine. Joe Biden immediately reversed Tony Blinken’s statement on this show. So what Tony Blinken says on this show cannot be credited when Joe Biden is out there imposing a de facto arms embargo on Israel at the same time he’s letting arms embargoes on Iran expire.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, $26 billion in emergency funding was just approved by the President. And there is not an arms embargo on Israel and there is not a block on intelligence sharing with Israel. You know that.
SEN. COTTON: Joe Biden said last week that he’s going to stop supplying offensive weapons that can be used in an urban setting. That is the only setting–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –If they go into Rafah–
SEN. COTTON: –In Gaza. That- that is the only setting in Gaza. And they have to go into Rafah. It- Joe Biden’s position is de facto for Hamas victory at this point. Israel’s goal is to destroy Hamas, which committed the worst atrocity against Jews since World War II. Hamas’s goal is to survive. If they do- if Israel does not go into Rafah and destroy Hamas in Rafah, Hamas will survive.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the Biden administration says they can go into Rafah, it’s how they do it. But I- I want to ask you more broadly because people like Senator Van Hollen, who is going to be on here, we’ll talk about the principle and the spirit and the meaning of U.S. law. And you know that past presidents have withheld military aid to Israel to force changes in behavior. President Reagan did that. President Bush did that. Why do you have a problem with President Biden doing it?
SEN. COTTON: Well- well first off, when he talked about the principle and the spirit of U.S. law, it sounds to me like they’re not talking about the letter of U.S. law, because Tony Blinken’s own report concluded they did not violate U.S. law. Ronald Reagan’s decision to pause the delivery of fighter jets in the 1980s was totally different from what happens here- what has happened here. Israel is fighting a war of survival against a terrorist group that committed the worst atrocity against Jews since World War II. In the 1980s, an Israeli ambassador had been targeted for assassination. Ronald Reagan knew that the pause of fighter jets would not interfere with Israel’s fighting because they had plenty of fighters. He did not pause munitions. Joe Biden is not sending munitions in the middle of a shooting war, that’s a war of survival. And look at the broader context. Israel knew that Ronald Reagan had its back in the region, he sank half of Iran’s navy. Joe Biden has consistently given Iran hundreds of billions of dollars of sanctions relief that exactly funded groups like Hamas and Hezbollah–
MARGARET BRENNAN: And you know that they dispute that and they are still sending weapons. But last month, Donald Trump told TIME Magazine, “Bibi Netanyahu rightfully has been criticized for what took place on October 7”. Do you agree with that assessment? Are you comfortable with any criticism of the Prime Minister?
SEN. COTTON: Well, I- I think Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli leaders have acknowledged they have responsibility for the failures on October 7. And they’ve said, as is the Israeli custom, when this war is over, there’ll probably be a commission of inquiry to figure out exactly what went wrong to ensure it doesn’t happen again. But President Trump said just last night that he would absolutely provide Israel with the weapons they need to finish the job. This would have never happened on President Trump- Trump’s watch, it didn’t happen on his watch. And if he were president, this war would have probably already been over with much less civilian suffering in Gaza because he would have backed Israel to the hilt from the beginning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that’s a debate on counterfactuals for another day, Senator, but it’s good to have you here in person. Thank you for your time. We’ll be right back.
A day after launching from the Kennedy Space Center, a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft caught up with the International Space Station and moved in for docking Sunday, bringing a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to the outpost to join two Starliner astronauts for a five-month tour of duty.
The rendezvous came amid word from SpaceX that it’s suspending Falcon 9 launches while engineers work to figure out what caused the crew’s Falcon 9 upper stage to misfire Saturday, after the Crew Dragon was released to fly on its own, resulting in an off-target re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
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SpaceX said in a post on the social media platform X that the second stage “experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause.”
It was the second Falcon 9 upper stage anomaly in less than three months and the third failure counting a first stage landing mishap. It’s not yet known what impact, if any, the latest problem might have on downstream flights, including two high-priority October launches to send NASA and European Space Agency probes on voyages to Jupiter and an asteroid.
But the anomaly had no impact on the Crew Dragon’s 28-hour rendezvous with the space station, and the ferry ship, carrying commander Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, docked at the lab’s forward port at 5:30 p.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 265 miles above southern Africa.
Standing by to welcome Hague and Gorbunov aboard were Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams, now serving as commander of the space station, along with Soyuz MS-26/72S commander Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit.
Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams will replace Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin when they return to Earth around Oct. 7 to wrap up a 217-day stay in space.
Wilmore and Williams took off on the Starliner’s first piloted test flight, a mission expected to last a little more than a week, on June 5. During rendezvous with the space station the day after launch, multiple helium leaks in the ship’s propulsion system were detected and five maneuvering jets failed to operate properly.
SpaceX/NASA
NASA and Boeing spent the next three months carrying out tests and analyses to determine if the Starliner could safely bring its crew back to Earth. In the end, NASA managers decided to keep Wilmore and Williams aboard the station and to bring the Starliner down without its crew.
They made that decision knowing the two astronauts could come home aboard the Crew Dragon launched Saturday. Two Crew 9 astronauts — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — were removed from the crew to provide seats for Wilmore and Williams when Hague and Gorbunov return to Earth in February.
When they finally get home, Wilmore and Williams will have logged 262 days in space compared to five months for Hague and Gorbunov.
The Crew 9 flight was SpaceX’s 95th launch so far this year. And it was the company’s third flight in less than three months to run into problems.
NASA
SpaceX recovers, refurbishes and relaunches Falcon 9 first stage boosters, which can land in California, Florida or aboard off-shore droneships. The second stages are not recovered.
Instead, SpaceX commands upper stage engine firings to drive the stages back into the atmosphere for a destructive breakup, making sure any debris falls into an ocean well away from shipping lanes or populated areas.
By taking Falcon 9 upper stages out of orbit after their missions, SpaceX ensures they will never pose a collision risk with other spacecraft or add to the space debris already in low-Earth orbit.
During launch of 20 Starlink internet satellites on July 11, the Falcon 9’s second stage malfunctioned and failed to complete a “burn” needed to reach the proper orbit. Stuck in a lower-than-planned orbit, all 20 satellites fell back into the atmosphere and burned up.
SpaceX briefly suspended flights at the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration, but the problem was quickly identified and fixed, and the company was allowed to resume flights while the investigation continued.
Then, during another Starlink launch on Aug. 28, a Falcon 9 first stage descending to toward landing crashed onto the deck of an off-shore drone ship. SpaceX has not provided any information about what went wrong or what, if any, corrective actions were required, but flights resumed three days later.
SpaceX provided no details about the off-target re-entry of the Crew Dragon’s upper stage other than the post late Saturday on X.
SpaceX
Going into Saturday’s launch, SpaceX was planning to launch 20 OneWeb broadband satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California this week, followed by a Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral. Both flights are now on hold.
More important, a Falcon 9 will be used to launch the European Space Agency’s $390 million Hera asteroid probe from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station around Oct. 7, followed by launch of NASA’s $5.2 billion Europa Clipper Jupiter probe from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 10.
Hera is bound for the asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos, a small body that NASA’s DART probe crashed into in 2022. Hera will study the system in detail to determine how the moon’s structure and orbit were changed by the impact. A primary goal is to learn more about how an asteroid threatening Earth some day might be safely diverted.
The Europa Clipper is a “flagship” mission to explore Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa and to determine the habitability of a vast sub-surface ocean. It is the largest planetary probe ever built, requiring a powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, made up of three strapped-together Falcon 9 first stages and a single upper stage, to send it on its way.
Both missions must get off the ground during relatively short “planetary” launch windows defined by the positions of Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the asteroids. Hera’s window opens on Oct. 7 and closes on Oct. 25. The Europa Clipper launch window opens on Oct. 10 and runs through Nov. 6.
Missing a planetary window can result in long, costly delays while while Earth, Jupiter, the asteroids and Mars, needed for gravity assist flybys, return to favorable orbital positions enabling launch.
Armando Piloto, a senior manager with the Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center, said the Falcon Heavy stages used for the Europa Clipper mission will not be recovered. Instead, they will consume all of their propellants to achieve the velocity needed to send the probe on a five-year voyage to Jupiter.
“I’ll point out that during the burn of the second stage, the vehicle with the spacecraft, will be traveling approximately 25,000 miles per hour, which will be the fastest speed for a Falcon second stage ever for Europa Clipper,” he said during a recent briefing.
Given SpaceX’s rapid recoveries after the July and August malfunctions, the upper stage re-entry anomaly Saturday presumably will be resolved in time to get the Europa Clipper and Hera missions off the ground within their launch windows. But that will depend on the results of the latest failure investigation.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed a landmark bill aimed at establishing first-in-the-nation safety measures for large artificial intelligence models.
The decision is a major blow to efforts attempting to rein in the homegrown industry that is rapidly evolving with little oversight. The bill would have established some of the first regulations on large-scale AI models in the nation and paved the way for AI safety regulations across the country, supporters said.
Earlier this month, the Democratic governor told an audience at Dreamforce, an annual conference hosted by software giant Salesforce, that California must lead in regulating AI in the face of federal inaction but that the proposal “can have a chilling effect on the industry.”
The proposal, which drew fierce opposition from startups, tech giants and several Democratic House members, could have hurt the homegrown industry by establishing rigid requirements, Newsom said.
“While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data,” Newsom said in a statement. “Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
Newsom on Sunday instead announced that the state will partner with several industry experts, including AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, to develop guardrails around powerful AI models. Li opposed the AI safety proposal.
The measure, aimed at reducing potential risks created by AI, would have required companies to test their models and publicly disclose their safety protocols to prevent the models from being manipulated to, for example, wipe out the state’s electric grid or help build chemical weapons. Experts say those scenarios could be possible in the future as the industry continues to rapidly advance. It also would have provided whistleblower protections to workers.
The legislation is among a host of bills passed by the Legislature this year to regulate AI, fight deepfakes and protect workers. State lawmakers said California must take actions this year, citing hard lessons they learned from failing to rein in social media companies when they might have had a chance.
Proponents of the measure, including Elon Musk and Anthropic, said the proposal could have injected some levels of transparency and accountability around large-scale AI models, as developers and experts say they still don’t have a full understanding of how AI models behave and why.
The bill targeted systems that require more than $100 million to build. No current AI models have hit that threshold, but some experts said that could change within the next year.
“This is because of the massive investment scale-up within the industry,” said Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher who resigned in April over what he saw as the company’s disregard for AI risks. “This is a crazy amount of power to have any private company control unaccountably, and it’s also incredibly risky.”
The United States is already behind Europe in regulating AI to limit risks. The California proposal wasn’t as comprehensive as regulations in Europe, but it would have been a good first step to set guardrails around the rapidly growing technology that is raising concerns about job loss, misinformation, invasions of privacy and automation bias, supporters said.
A number of leading AI companies last year voluntarily agreed to follow safeguards set by the White House, such as testing and sharing information about their models. The California bill would have mandated AI developers to follow requirements similar to those commitments, said the measure’s supporters.
But critics, including former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, argued that the bill would “kill California tech” and stifle innovation. It would have discouraged AI developers from investing in large models or sharing open-source software, they said.
Newsom’s decision to veto the bill marks another win in California for big tech companies and AI developers, many of whom spent the past year lobbying alongside the California Chamber of Commerce to sway the governor and lawmakers from advancing AI regulations.
Two other sweeping AI proposals, which also faced mounting opposition from the tech industry and others, died ahead of a legislative deadline last month. The bills would have required AI developers to label AI-generated content and ban discrimination from AI tools used to make employment decisions.
Some residents east of Atlanta were evacuated while others were told to shelter in place to avoid contact with a chemical plume after a fire at a chemical plant.
Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDaniel told reporters that a sprinkler head malfunctioned around 5 a.m. Sunday at the BioLab plant in Conyers. That caused water to mix with a water-reactive chemical, which produced a plume of chemicals. The chief said she wasn’t sure what chemicals were included.
A small roof fire was initially contained, but reignited Sunday afternoon, Sheriff Eric Levett said in a video posted on Facebook as gray smoke billowed into the sky behind him. He said authorities were trying to get the fire under control and urged people to stay away from the area.
People in the northern part of Rockdale County were ordered to evacuate and others were told to shelter in place with windows and doors closed. Sheriff’s office spokesperson Christine Nesbitt did not know the number of people evacuated.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division were both on site, county Emergency Management Director Sharon Webb said. The agencies are monitoring the air “to give us more of an idea of what the plume consists of.”
McDaniel said crews were working on removing the chemical from the building, away from the water source. Once the product is contained, the situation will be assessed and officials will let residents know whether it is safe to return to their homes, she said.
An evacuation center was opened at Wolverine Gym in Covington.