Antisemitism Has No Place in Our Movement

By Tom Cotton

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

 

The following is a lightly edited transcript of remarks by Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) at Tuesday’s symposium on antisemitism in Washington, D.C., hosted by National Review and the Republican Jewish Coalition.

 

It’s an honor to join you all today. Norm [Coleman], it’s always great to be with you. I want to thank the RJC Chief Operating Officer Alex Siegel. It’s always great to be here with you. I’m sorry Matt Brooks couldn’t be here with us today. Chuck DeFeo, National Review CEO and my old friend the editor in chief of National Review, Rich Lowry. Thank you all for convening this conference. Thank you all for leading the fight against antisemitism. This is unfortunately a timely and important symposium given the state of affairs in the world.

 

I know many of you are deeply concerned about what seems to be a rising tide of antisemitism. I am as well, but as King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” There’s a reason antisemitism is called the ancient hatred. It’s been with us always; sadly it will probably always be with us whether it’s spouted by the likes of Father Coughlin, Adolf Hitler, Louis Farrakhan, Ilhan Omar.

 

I know many of you are also concerned, though, about a seeming rise of antisemitism among “influencers” on the erstwhile right. Now I use sarcastic air quotes for a reason; first off, these “influencers” are perceived to be on the “right.” And maybe they once were, maybe they once wrote for center-right magazines, maybe they once worked for center-right websites or media companies, but I do not agree that I share a political movement or political party with anyone who traffics in antisemitism. And for that matter doesn’t just traffic in antisemitism or at least adjacent to antisemitism, but shares Liz Warren’s economic policies or Rashida Tlaib’s foreign policy. Because if you notice, these so-called influencers, like antisemites usually do, often have a deep antipathy to free-market capitalism. Whatever their views once were, they have since adopted Liz Warren’s economic policies. They also, as I’ve said, share Rashida Tlaib’s foreign policy, which could be summed up as Jeane Kirkpatrick once said, “blame America first.” They always blame American first; if they’re not blaming Israel first, it’s a close competition.

 

I also used ironic, sarcastic air quotes about the term “influencer.” That is a fake, made-up, phony word. It didn’t exist five or ten years ago; go look at a dictionary. See if that word was present in that dictionary five or ten years ago. It wasn’t. So the question is, Why did people have to make up the word “influencer”? And I think the answer is the time-tested, old-fashioned, sturdy word “influential” does not apply to them. They are not influential. They are at least not influential with Donald Trump, who continues to reject their kooky advice. They’re not influential with Republicans in the Senate, who continue to reject their kooky advice. And if you look at public opinion polls, they’re least influential of all with normal voting Republicans all across the country. Indeed, self-identified MAGA Republicans — there’s polls out there you can identity. The pollster asks the respondent, “Are you a Republican?” “Yes.” “Do you identify as a MAGA Republican or let’s call it a traditional Republican?” Self-identified MAGA Republicans are more supportive in general of the president’s foreign policy than self-identified traditional Republicans. Think about that, people who are asked to identify as a MAGA Republican with Donald Trump are more in favor of bombing the hell out of the ayatollahs than self-identified traditional Republicans. So it’s clear that these “influencers” don’t have much influence where it matters.

 

Right now, these days it matters most in the White House. And is that all that surprising? I know we’re having a conference about antisemitism, but in the White House we have the most philosemitic president ever. Not only has he been the strongest supporter of Israel, not only does he condemn antisemitism in all its forms, Donald Trump loves the Jewish people so much that he has Jewish grandchildren. The image of Donald Trump going to a grandchild’s bar or bat mitzvah, it’s very entertaining to me. I’d like to be a fly on the wall there. But, again, these so-called “influencers” don’t have influence where it really matters. And where it really matters today, besides the White House, is taking the fight to the worst source of antisemitism in the world, which is of course the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is where, I know, many of your thoughts are today, it’s where my thoughts and a lot of my work in the Senate is today. So, I just want to touch briefly on where things stand there.

 

First off, I want to express my condolences and sympathies to the families of seven brave Americans who have been killed so far in our campaign against the ayatollah’s revolutionary regime. I also want to express condolences to the Israelis, whether they’re soldiers, or whether they’re innocent civilians, and for that matter the innocent civilians in Arab nations who have lost their lives due to Iran’s, I don’t know what you might call it, their Yosemite Sam strategy of just shooting at everyone in the region, even countries who have been relatively friendly to Iran, like Oman, who tried to facilitate a diplomatic resolution here. They did not die in vain, not those Americans or anyone in the Middle East, because after 47 years of terror and revolutionary violence, America is finally putting our foot down and saying we’re not going to take it anymore.

 

Their outlaw regime from the very beginning has waged a campaign of terror against the United States, invading our embassy, taking hostage dozens of our fellow citizens for more than a year, killing more than 200 at the Marine Barracks in Beirut, killing several of our troops at Khobar Towers, likely being complicit in the bombing of the USS Cole, maiming and killing thousands of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and generally terrorizing the civilized world. The president has said time and again, as I’ve said since I entered public life, we can never allow such lunatics to have a nuclear weapon, and we put an end to their ambitions last June when our Air Force, combined with the Israeli Defense Forces, destroyed their nuclear program, but apparently the ayatollahs didn’t get the picture.

 

As the president said yesterday, we had clear evidence that they were trying to move forward at other locations with their nuclear program, but perhaps even more importantly, we couldn’t live with the imbalance of power of their missiles and our defenses. I can’t get into the numbers, but I can tell you that before this war started, Iran had thousands and thousands of missiles, and their vast missile arsenal far, far exceeded the combined missile defenses of the United States, Israel, and our Arab friends. That is an unacceptable threat to the United States. That would create in essence within a few months, maybe a year, an impenetrable shield through which they could continue to build a nuclear program in the future. That’s much like what happened with North Korea in the 1990s and 2000s. They didn’t have nuclear weapons yet, but they had tens of thousands of rockets, and artillery shells, and missiles aimed at Seoul which prevented a barrier to stop them from going nuclear. But if it’s an unacceptable threat to the United States, it’s an existential threat to Israel. Because they have enough conventional missiles to destroy Israel’s way of life. That is not something that we could allow to continue. That was a dark and gathering storm cloud on the horizon, and the president decided in conjunction with Prime Minister Netanyahu that after Iran had been so badly weakened over the last two years, now was the time to go for the jugular and put an end to this menacing threat, and that’s what we’re currently on the path to do. So that was the first objective of this operation, to destroy their missile forces, and to destroy their ability to reconstitute them by hitting their manufacture sites.

 

The second, while we are at it, was to sink their navy, which was old and decrepit and small, but it is powerful enough to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which no president since World War II has ever been willing to tolerate. Third, we’re also going to return to those nuclear sites and make sure that they get the message once again, that we will never allow it. And fourth, we’re hitting, and especially Israel is hitting, the thugs that have been responsible for repressing Iran’s own people and supporting terrorists around the world: the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, the Basij militia. Now, we can’t predict the future about what will happen with Iran, or who might be the next leader of Iran. Hopefully, the people of Iran can rise up and reclaim their destiny and once again live with some measure of freedom and dignity, but even if that’s not the case, at least Iran will be totally neutered as a military threat to the United States, to Israel, and to the rest of the civilized world.

 

Those are big ambitions, but we are a big nation. We have power that far exceeds any other nation. We have a president who is willing to use it. And you see that thanks to the bravery and skill of our troops, and Israel’s troops, that less than two weeks into this war we have Iran on the back foot. You probably saw Admiral Cooper, who commands our forces in the region, who said that their launches of missiles and drones has declined by more than 90 percent since the first days of this war. We expect it to continue to decline. We might still face more casualties, there might be more civilian lives lost, but in the end, when we face either a new Iran that is a normal nation, not an ideological and revolutionary exporter of violence and terror — or if we simply have an Iran that is totally defanged, which has no navy, has no air force, has no missile arsenal — the world will be much safer because of the skill and bravery of our combined forces and because of the strength and resolution of the president and the prime minister.

 

So, we’ve got many uncertain days ahead of us, and there may be more cost to pay, but I predict that when all is said and done, because of these actions, once again, we will be the strongest and most powerful nation in the region. And not just Israel and not just our troops, but everyone who lives within shooting distance of Iran will be grateful for what the United States and Israel has done in these days.

 

Thank you all. God bless you. God bless the United States.