Welcome to episode 82 of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

This one was recorded live from the sea lion wing of the Luther Abel Memorial Home.

Thank you to them for hosting us. And thank you to the Herzog Foundation

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My guest today is Tom Cotton, a U.S. Senator from Arkansas, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and most recently, the author of the book, Seven Things You Can't Say About China.

Senator Tom Cotton, welcome to the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

Thank you, Charles. It's good to be on with you.

All right. Let's start from the beginning.

Before we get to the seven things, your first chapter in this book is, in a sense, an overture to the rest of the book. You describe China as the focus of evil

in the modern world. Why do you say that? Why does it matter? Well, Charles, I borrow there

from Ronald Reagan, who famously called communist Russia, the Soviet Union, the focus of the evil, the modern world, an evil empire,

and that scandalized all of the right-thinking people in Washington, D.C., but it was totally correct then,

just as it's totally correct now now to say that communist China is the

focus of evil in the modern world. For too long, going back decades, really, too many Americans,

...