Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a U.S. Army veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, commended President Donald Trump for his selection of U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his National Security Adviser.

“I want to commend the president for picking General McMaster as a national security adviser,” Cotton said. “It reflects great credit on him, as does his entire national security cabinet. General McMaster has been a legendary officer in the Army for 20 years. He fought one of the decisive battles in the Gulf War. He was one of the very first commanders in the Second Iraq War to bring counterinsurgency into the fight, almost two years before the surge in 2007. He’s an unorthodox thinker. He’s never marched to the beat of the Army drum, so to speak.”

“In 2006 and 2007, General McMaster was passed over for a promotion from colonel to one star,” he continued. “And I and many other lieutenants and captains at the time were very discouraged by that. I actually submitted my resignation papers in part because of the way the Army had treated General McMaster. Now ultimately I withdrew those and had the opportunity to deploy to Afghanistan. But Bob Gates recognized just what a great leader General McMaster was, and he actually recalled David Petraeus from Iraq in the middle of the war to sit on a promotion panel that ultimately gave General McMaster his first star.”

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