Trump’s defence secy can be mly industry sweetheart

WASHNGTON: Remember the senator who, in March 2015, tried to sabotage President Barack Obama's nuclear negotiations with Iran by writing an open letter to that country's leaders, warning that any deal would be dismantled because the president only stays for eight years but senators can be lifers?

What about the senator who, when his constituents fought a law legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ people, urged them to "have a sense of perspective" because "in Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay"?

Or, more recently, the pro-Brexit senator who took to Twitter to defend Donald Trump's proposed Muslim registry as a "visa-tracking system, nothing based on religion?" (It's not that he doesn't want to help Syrian refugees. He just doesn't want to help Sunni Muslim  Syrian refugees.)

These are all bullet points on the same résumé. Arkansas's Tom Cotton, a 39-year-old Harvard graduate and two-time combat veteran, is apparently on the list of candidates to become Trump's secretary of defence.

Like most of the men (and it's nearly all been men) floated top positions in the coming Trump White House, Cotton is from the rightmost wing of the conservative branch of the Republican Party, and has a particular focus on denouncing radical Islam while fostering an almost religious fervor for the US military.  But what makes him distinct is how quickly he's climbed up the ladder.

He won a seat in the House of Representatives in 2012 as part of the Tea Party wave of conservatives, and in 2013, after only seven months in the House, Cotton announced his bid for the Senate, in which he's currently the youngest legislator. During both races, he campaigned heavily on his veteran status, and still brings it up in nearly every interview and address.