Republican senator Tom Cotton, who is seen as a potential presidential candidate for 2024 US elections, described slavery as a “necessary evil” to slam an initiative by a leading US daily.

“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction,” Cotton, in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.

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Cotton made the remarks against the New York Times 1619 Project, an initiative to reframe US history from around August 1619, when the slave ships were first arrived on the American soil.

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On Thursday, Cotton introduced a legislation that aims to cut off federal money to teach 1619 Project in primary and secondary schools. 

In the interview, Cotton also said the history of slavery, its impact and role should be studied on the basis of the “development of our country”, adding otherwise we can’t “understand our country”.

He also said the 1619 Project calls US “at root, a systematically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that root and branch.”

When the news broke out, Cotton called it “fake” and argued that his comments were referring to the founders of the US. 

“I said that *the Founders viewed slavery as a necessary evil*,” Cotton wrote on Twitter.