Lankford: Commentator threatened to 'destroy' me for trying to fix border in election year

07 February 2024

Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), who was the lead Republican negotiator in the bipartisan border security legislation, didn't hold back in blasting the far-right media ecosystem for its role in tanking the 370-page bill he spent weeks crafting.

Ahead of the US Senate's vote on the bill Republicans have already signaled they won't pass, Lankford shared a threat he received from an unnamed far-right "popular commentator" that they would target him over his efforts to pass a bipartisan package to address the ongoing flow of migrants at the Southern border overwhelming law enforcement.

"I had a popular commentator four weeks ago that I talked to... that told me flat out if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you," Lankford said. "Because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election. By the way, they have been faithful to their promise and have done everything they can to destroy me in the past several weeks."

Lankford's assertion that the commentator followed through on that threat may be related to the Oklahoma Republican Party voting to censure him in late January. Oklahoma state senator Dusty Deevers tweeted the censure resolution, which accused Oklahoma's senior US senator of "playing fast and loose with Democrats on our border policy" and demanded he "cease and desist jeopardizing the security and liberty of the people of Oklahoma and the United States."

Wednesday's vote on the doomed bill is the culmination of Republicans fighting hard for far-right immigration policies, winning concessions on the vast bulk of their demands, then abruptly scuttling the deal after former President Donald Trump warned GOP lawmakers not to support it in an effort to deny President Joe Biden a victory on his biggest campaign issue.

In December, as the US Senate was mulling a supplemental foreign aid package to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian incursion on its own borders — along with additional funding for Israel and Taiwan — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) insisted the bill wouldn't pass muster in his chamber without money to bolster security on the Southern border.

"The battle is for the border," Johnson said late last year. "We do that first as a top priority, and we’ll take care of these other obligations."

However, as Trump's 2024 campaign has struggled to challenge Biden on the economy given consistently strong jobs reports, a declining inflation rate, increases in real wages and low unemployment numbers, he has since pivoted to immigration as his core policy issue. Biden signing a bipartisan bill that would have enacted many items on Republican wish lists for the border would have stripped Trump of his ability to argue that only he can fix the border.

In a recent post to his Truth Social platform, Trump condemned the bipartisan immigration package as "a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for the Republican Party."

"Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill," Trump wrote. "Don't be STUPID!!!"

On the campaign stump in Nevada, the former president said Republicans can "blame it on me" should the bill not pass. It has since failed to reach the 60-vote threshold in the US Senate.

Watch the video of Lankford's remarks below, or by clicking this link.

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