What did Tom Cotton and Sarah Huckabee Sanders say at the RNC?
Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Sen. Tom Cotton, former vice presidential hopefuls, took to the stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.
As expected, both strongly endorsed former President and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and decried President Joe Biden’s job performance.
They seemed to make the case that the interests of women and immigrants, both groups that generally tend to align with the Democratic party, are better off represented by Republicans.
More: RNC live coverage: What time does the RNC start tonight? Who are the night 3 speakers?
What did Tom Cotton say at the RNC?
Cotton’s five-minute speech focused relatively narrowly on immigration and his visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.
He opened with a story about a Mexican-American housepainter named Manuel who, he said, told Cotton that he and his siblings prospered under the Trump administration.
“With Trump, we’ve had more work than ever. Things are good,” Cotton quoted him as saying.
“After Joe Biden and the ‘border czar,’ Kamala Harris, reversed President Trump’s immigration policies and welcomed the Third World invasion, I traveled to our border,” Cotton said.
He described talking to “migrants huddled under a bridge” who, according to Cotton, said they had come to the U.S. not because of “persecution” but “because they could get in” to the country for work.
Cotton’s flight home from the border to Arkansas at the end of his trip was “full of these migrants, and you, all of you, paid for their tickets,” he said, pointing outwards to boos from the audience.
He used the issue of immigration and asylum to draw a stark contrast between Trump and Biden.
“Donald Trump said you can’t have a nation without borders,” he said, and that he “banned travel to America from terrorist-infested countries.”
“Joe Biden thinks borders are racist,” he said, and “gave migrants welfare, free hotels and more.”
He closed his speech by saying that to elect Biden would be to choose “chaos.”
What did Sarah Huckabee Sanders say at the RNC?
Sanders’ speech was more than twice as long as Cotton’s, and she seemed to take a much more personal, heartfelt approach. She began with an anecdote about taking her young son to the White House, where Trump bent down and tried to hug the child.
Later, she spoke about a time when Trump supported her after she was attacked by TV pundits, painting a warmer and more nurturing image of the former president than is often seen in the media.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” she said. “That’s the Donald Trump that I know.”
Early on, Sanders went topical, addressing Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life.
“Not even an assassin’s bullet could stop him,” she said. “God almighty intervened because America is one nation under God, and he is certainly not finished with President Trump.”
She hammered the point that the country was better off under the former administration.
“President Trump did the job that Kamala won’t,” she said, mispronouncing the vice president’s first name, “and Joe Biden simply can’t.”
“The left doesn’t care about empowering women,” she said, repeating a line she has used at appearances in her home state. “Biden and Harris can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
“We have a president (Trump) who believes in empowering every American,” she said.
She also touted some of her accomplishments in Arkansas, including sending National Guard troops to the U.S. Mexico border, introducing a voucher program to fund private and religious schools with taxpayer dollars, and “crack(ing) down on crime and drugs.”
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Tom Cotton and Sarah Huckabee Sanders RNC speeches, recapped
