Fox News host confronts Republican senator over Trump’s ‘brainwashing’ of the party

Fox host Shannon Bream sparred with Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton on Sunday over whether the GOP had handed Joe Biden and Democrats a messaging victory by bowing to Donald Trump’s wishes and killing a bipartisan piece of immigration legislation negotiated in the Senate.

Mr Cotton defended Republicans including himself who had voted against the legislation, which died in the Senate this past week after just a few Republicans (including the lead Republican negotiator for the compromise, James Lankford) crossed party lines to vote in favour of it. The move served to hang Mr Lankford out to dry while capitulating to Mr Trump and his loyalists who did not want to see Republicans hand Mr Biden an election-year messaging victory.

But it also served to throw into question whether Republican elected officials are serious about addressing border security, or merely wish to use the immigration system in America as a political cudgel. By killing Mr Lankford’s compromise with Democrats, Republicans effectively lost their shot at passing what could have been the first real piece of legislation addressing illegal border crossings in a decade while also giving up the opportunity to achieve a number of their own supposed priorities — including the construction of fencing along the US-Mexico border. The likelihood of such legislation passing under a Trump presidency is far slimmer.

Democrats, meanwhile, have turned on the offence and attacked their Republican colleagues for negotiating in bad faith and being unserious when they claim to want to address illegal border crossings.

“So President Biden not only gets to blame you guys about the border, but he gets to blame President Trump, who he says tanked this whole deal, saying he wants to