Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), usually an ally of President Trump, is taking aim at his fellow Republican senators who sparked Wednesday's Capitol siege.
Cotton was notably not among congressmembers who objected to Wednesday's Electoral College certification, which came after Trump and his allies spent weeks falsely claiming fraud had cost him the election. While Cotton had previously said he had some "concerns" with vote accuracy in some states, he made it clear to Fox & Friends on Thursday that it's "not Congress' role to reverse the election results."
Meanwhile "some senators, for political advantage, were giving false hope to their supporters, misleading them into thinking that somehow" objecting to electoral college votes "could reverse the results of the election, or even get some kind of emergency audit of the election results," Cotton told Fox & Friends. "That was never going to happen." And "as insurrectionists literally stormed the Capitol," some of those senators "were literally sending out fundraising emails" and trying to capitalize on the moment, Cotton said.
Cotton was likely referring to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who led the opposition to the electoral vote certification and sent out fundraising messages to supporters as the siege was going on. Kathryn Krawczyk