Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., dismissed one of President Obama’s top staffers as a “fiction writer” who has endangered the United States by playing a key role in developing and selling the Iran nuclear deal.
“Ben Rhodes started out as a fiction writer and it’s clear he never stopped,” Cotton told the Washington Examiner.
Cotton’s statement comes in response to a profile of Rhodes, who was studying for a master’s in creative writing before pursuing a career in government service. The profile was notable for Rhodes’ comments about how the White House team manipulates reporters, his belief that “rational discourse” is impossible, and his decision to be “actively misleading” in the public portrayal of how the Iran nuclear deal was negotiated.
“I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take a vote,” Rhodes told the New York Times. “But that’s impossible.”
Obama’s team angered lawmakers, especially on the Republican side, by refusing to submit the Iran deal as a treaty that would require support from two-thirds of the Senate. When Cotton wrote an open letter explaining to Iranian leaders that this refusal meant that the next president could revoke the deal, the White House hit back.
“I think it’s somewhat ironic that some members of Congress want to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran,” Obama replied.
But Rhodes acknowledged to the Times that those “hardliners” were the ones agreeing to the deal — that the rise of putative moderates in the 2013 Iranian elections had nothing to do with the decision to start negotiations, which began before the elections.
“Yes, I would prefer that it turns out that [senior Iranian officials] are real reformers who are going to be steering this country into the direction that I believe it can go in, because their public is educated and, in some respects, pro-American,” Rhodes said. “But we are not betting on that.”
Rhodes maintained that it was correct to manipulate the public debate about the Iran talks because “rational discourse” is not possible. “In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,” he said.
Cotton suggested that such an attitude is inappropriate for a senior White House official. “It’s cute when kids play make-believe,” he said. “It’s dangerous when the president and his advisers do.”
