As the controversy heats up over the U.S.-led talks between world powers with Iran about Tehran’s nuclear development program, so does the latest spat between the White House and senators who sent a letter to Iran.
The partisan divide has deepened between nearly all the GOP senators who signed that letter, organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), and President Barack Obama.
Several Democrats who also signed on to the letter were called “traitors” in a headline on the front page of Tuesday’s New York Daily News.
Vice President Joe Biden hit back in a long, angry statement late Monday, charging that the letter “sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments – a message that is as false as it is dangerous.”
Cotton responded Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” with equal vigor, bluntly questioning the Obama administration’s competence in foreign policy – and specifically, the acumen of the vice president.
“Joe Biden, as [President] Barack Obama’s own secretary of defense has said, has been wrong about nearly every foreign policy and national security decision in the last 40 years,” Cotton said.
“Moreover, if Joe Biden respects the dignity of the institution of the Senate he should be insisting that the president submit any deal to approval of the Senate, which is exactly what he did on numerous deals during his time in Senate,” he added, as quoted by Politico.