'Ignorant and stupid': GOP senator dragged on social media for comment about Civil War and slavery

28 December 2023

After presidential candidate and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley failed to condemn slavery when answering a question about the cause of the Civil War, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) decided to weigh in with a comment of his own.

"The Civil War started because the American people elected an anti-slavery Republican as president and Democrats revolted rather than accept minor restrictions on the expansion of slavery to the western territories," Cotton posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

Cotton's tweet was met with almost universal scorn on the social media platform, with journalists and pundits pointing out the Arkansas Republican's false equivalency of antebellum-era politics with today's very different political environment.

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"MAGA propagandists like Tom Cotton don't want you to understand that Southern racists used to be Democrats but are Republicans now. This partisan sea change happened through the 1960s, '70s and '80s," former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob tweeted. "It's explained in those history books that Republicans don't want you to read."

Liberal social media personality Ron Filipowski piled on in a similar fashion, calling Cotton's tweet "another ignorant and stupid analogy."

"This Republican Party doesn’t even resemble the one from 2015 much less 1860," Filipowski tweeted. "And the white southern Dixiecrats all switched to Republicans in the 1970-80s, so the Democratic Party today also in no way resembles that of 1860."

Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali went even further, reminding his followers that it isn't Democrats but Republicans that today are defending the preservation of Confederate monuments.

"Democrats today aren't waving or defending the Confederate flag or lamenting about the 'lost cause.' That's Tom Cotton's GOP," Ali tweeted. "If Lincoln was a Republican today, the MAGA extremists would probably try to assassinate him."

And in response to Cotton's follow-up tweet in which he wrote that "Democrats would sooner tear the country apart than treat all citizens equally before the law, regardless of color," Ali fired back.

"Tom Cotton will support Trump for President who cited Hitler and said immigrants poison the blood of this country and incited a failed insurrection, but go on about equality and tearing the country apart," he wrote.

South Carolina-based pediatrician Dr. Michael O'Brien was simple in his criticism, tweeting, "Tom Cotton is a prime example of why we should never ban books."

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