Senator Mark Pryor (D., Ark.) struggled badly when asked if President Obama is handling the Ebola crisis properly, letting out a long “um” before deciding that “it’s hard to know” the answer, even though his Senate campaign has attacked Representative Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on the issue.
“My impression is that we have people over there both from CDC and other medical-type people, and even some engineers to try to build, you know, medical facilities — that’s what they need over there, they need the medical infrastructure,” Pryor told NBC’s Kasie Hunt.
Cotton, who wants Obama to suspend flights from Ebola-affected countries due to a concern that terrorists would send infected people to the United States, seized on Pryor’s struggle with the question.
“Tom Cotton has taken a serious, measured response to the Ebola crisis, joining Arkansas’s other three Congressmen last week in sending a letter to President Obama that calls for common-sense measures to step up our country’s preparedness against the Ebola outbreak,” spokesman David Ray says. “Serious times demand serious leaders, and that’s not what Arkansans are getting from Senator Pryor.”
This isn’t the first time Pryor has struggled with an apparent softball of a question from Hunt. In March, he couldn’t answer a question about Cotton’s military service without a gaffe.
“I think that’s part of this sense of entitlement, that [Cotton] gives off, that almost is like, ‘I served my country, therefore let me into the Senate,’” Pryor said.