Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) said Sunday that every conversation he has had with President Donald Trump for the last month has involved the effort to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Cotton was speaking on Breitbart News Sunday, answering a question about the possible economic and political impact of the virus, which has not killed anyone in the U.S. but has caused thousands of deaths elsewhere, and which China is struggling to contain.

The president’s very much on top of the threat we face with coronavirus. In fact, probably every conversation I’ve had with him in the past month has involved, at least in part, coronavirus, to include in mid-January, when I urged the administration to stop travel from China, and the president, very boldly and decisively, shut down that travel. That was a big decision. That was the decision President [Barack] Obama was not willing to make about the Ebola crisis in 2014. But he s engaged, and he is directing a very aggressive effort to prevent any further outbreaks than what we have in the country right now. Because ultimately, the most important thing is the health, safety, and security of the american people. There may, indeed, be some economic effects — we can’t deny that — we don’t know how severe it will be. But if there [are] any economic effects, China will be 100% to blame for those effects because they have been so dishonest and corrupt and deceitful from the very beginning, when this virsus started breaking out in late November and early December. I am confident that the American worker, the American farmer, the American rancher can fight through it: even if there is something of an economic slowdown due to coronavirus, it won’t be nearly as bad here as it is in China. But we do have to be prepared for that possibility while recognizing that the most important thing is the health and safety of the American people.



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Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.