Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is willing to accept Donald Trump's assurances that he won't let his private business interests interfere with his decision-making as president of the United States.
The Arkansas Republican said the real estate developer and former reality TV star had promised throughout his campaign to step away from the international business he has spent his life building to focus on public service, and he supposed that Trump would do so.
"This is a more complicated matter than what we've seen in the past, with past presidents or senior officials just simply selling stock or putting stock into a blind trust," Cotton told CNN's "New Day." "You can't really hide a building or hide who's going into a building, but I trust Donald Trump's word that he's going to put the business of the American people first."
Cotton had been a vocal critic of Hillary Clinton's potential foreign entanglements during the election campaign, but he said Trump's business interests in dozens of foreign countries were not nearly as troubling.
"The Clinton Foundation had a fairly well documented record of receiving contributions, or Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, of receiving speech fees from people with key interests in front of the federal government," Cotton said. "Running a hotel is very different. People stay in Trump Hotels all around the world, to include here in the United States, that's not paying someone $750,000 to give a speech in a foreign government when you're trying to influence the State Department."
Trump has said his children would take over his international businesses, which may be already benefitting from his election in Argentina and Washington, D.C.
"Donald Trump has made a commitment to focus on the business of the American people," Cotton said. "He's going to be revealing more details about exactly what he plans to do with his business organization in a couple weeks. It's a highly complex matter, it's not like selling a share of stock. I just think that we should all wait and hear more of those details in the next couple weeks."
"I trust Donald Trump's word that he's going to put the business of the American people first" -- @SenTomCotton https://t.co/AyWgRWHLEj
— New Day (@NewDay) December 1, 2016
