Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) appears to be rising in former President Donald Trump’s search for who will be his vice presidential running mate during this fall’s election.

Cotton was not included in an ABC News report earlier this week that listed those who the Trump campaign reached out to for information.

A subsequent report from The Washington Post said that Cotton was among that top candidates who have been asked to submit paperwork.

“Senator Cotton stands out among the other candidates as a battle tested, serious minded lawmaker with exceptional fundraising skills,” a source close to Trump told The Daily Wire. “He’s a fighter that would round out the ticket in a way that is most likely to secure a victory in November.”

The New York Times said in a recent report that Cotton has “unexpectedly emerged as a top contender” in Trump’s search, a signal that Trump believes that experience and discipline will be key factors to regaining the White House.

The news comes as Cotton has taken his defense of the former president in interviews to new heights, including during a Sunday NBC News interview where he aggressively defended Trump against the prosecutions that he faces, his record as president, many of the claims that Trump has made, and Trump’s supporters who have faced what many have said are unfair prosecutions in cases related to the January 6 riot.

The Times said that Trump has privately praised Cotton as “a reliable and effective communicator in cable news interviews,” something that is a top tier quality that Trump seeks in people he surrounds himself with.

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He also admires Cotton’s military service and Ivy League education, the report said. Trump has liked the senator for years and had considered giving Cotton a top administration position in the past.

“The two men fostered a close relationship during their time in Washington. They worked closely on immigration issues and shared an affinity for the conservative populism fueling the Republican Party,” the report said. “Cotton’s presence on a presidential ticket could help reassure Republicans in the party’s dwindling traditional wing, particularly fellow foreign-policy hawks. Many of these Republicans remain undecided about a second term for Mr. Trump and might be put off by the selection of an inexperienced MAGA loyalist.”

Throughout his time in Washington, Cotton has made all the right enemies that could make him an appealing candidate for Trump.

In 2020, Cotton led the charge in raising awareness at the start of the coronavirus pandemic about a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan that had been conducting experiments on bats and that it was the likely source of the pandemic. Cotton was subsequently castigated by the media as it sought to cast his remarks as “fringe” conspiracy theories — even though many of the world’s leading scientists now believe that the pandemic originated from the Chinese lab.

Months later, as far-left extremists burned down cities and rioted across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, Cotton penned a piece in The New York Times urging Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to stop the billions of dollars in damage that the Black Lives Matter and Antifa extremists caused and the thousands of law enforcement officers whom they attacked.