In a statement released Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded that Republican Sen. Tom Cotton resign after being misquoted as saying slavery was a “necessary evil.”
“This is the definition of fake news,” Cotton tweeted in response to a Political Wire headline claiming he said that slavery was a necessary evil. “I said that *the Founders viewed slavery as a necessary evil* and described how they put the evil institution on the path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln.” He similarly debunked a tweet by the New York Times‘ 1619 Project leader Nikole Hannah Jones: “No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”
CAIR predictably called Cotton’s purported remarks racist and demanded he “resign after attempting to justify the enslavement of Black men, women and children in America…” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said.
Curiously, Mitchell had nothing to say about slavery in the Islamic world, which still exists.