Exclusive — Tom Cotton at CPAC: ‘Republicans Need to Pursue the America First Agenda’

ORLANDO, Florida — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Breitbart News that the future of the Republican Party is with former President Donald Trump’s America First agenda, and that if the GOP embraces Trump’s vision the party will come back in the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections.

Cotton said in the exclusive interview with Breitbart News at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), hosted by the American Conservative Union (ACU), that Trump “was the first Republican President to get immigration right in a very long time” and previewed the former president’s Sunday speech hammering President Joe Biden’s open borders agenda.

“This [immigration] is one of the issues President Trump and I first started talking about when he was a candidate in the summer of 2015: Immigration, and also the Iran nuclear deal,” Cotton told Breitbart News. “But he has helped reset the Republican Party’s view on this. But not entirely — you still have a lot of businesses out there that want cheap migrant labor. They want open borders. They want more guest workers to come in. But that’s not what our voters want. So what our voters want going forward — whether it’s president in 2024, the Senate and Congress in 2022, or just down to local offices this year, they want Republicans who will follow the America First principles that President Trump laid out. Because really, if you’re not going to put America first, where are you going to put America? Is it going to be last? Is it going to be 17th? Is it going to be third? Republicans need to pursue the America First agenda.”

Cotton also said that conservatives are looking for Republicans to stand up for the country and that he believes the future of the movement is bright. He said that despite the disappointment for GOP voters in November, the silver lining is that Republican gains in the House trimmed the Democrat majority to just five seats and the Senate is evenly split 50-50.

“We need all conservatives to be standing up for America more than ever,” Cotton said. “I know everyone’s disappointed about the election results but remember, we’re in a much better position coming out of the Trump presidency than we were coming out of either of the Bush presidencies. We had gains in the House. Nancy Pelosi has the smallest majority in 80 years. The Senate is evenly split. We picked up seats in state legislatures. We’ll probably win back the House just based on reapportionment and redistricting alone next year. So we have some difficult months ahead of us trying stop, you know, a wasteful $2 trillion spending bill, a massive amnesty and open borders bill that Joe Biden has introduced, higher taxes and attacks on our police and everything we hold dear, but we need conservatives engaged and in the fight and we have a great shot at winning back power next year.”

Cotton, in other parts of the interview, also lit up the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to influence American democracy and culture, and he criticized Biden’s amnesty plan saying that he believes Republicans have the votes to stop it in the Senate.