It seems Republican Senator James Lankford (Oklahoma) faced a frustrating situation when trying to push forward a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year. Despite his efforts, the bill was blocked in the Senate, with some members of his own party opposing it under the influence of former President Trump.
Fox’s Neil Cavuto pointed out this fact during an interview, highlighting the internal dynamics within the Republican Party that contributed to the bill’s failure.
“It’s your colleagues in your party, Sir, who torpedoed this, who didn’t get the facts right on what you just outlined was in that measure,” Cavuto said on Thursday’s Your World on Fox News. “They killed it, ironically, not Democrats.”
And Lankford acknowledged the pain of seeing the bill derailed due to political motivations, particularly during a time when immigration and border security remain contentious issues.
“Right,” Lankford agreed. “It was, and it was painful to be able to watch it get stirred up in all the presidential politics. And several of my colleagues started to look for ways after President Trump said don’t fix anything during the presidential election.”
After correctly blaming Trump, Lankford re-targeted Congress:
LANKFORD: Quite a few of my colleagues backed up and looked for a reason to shoot against it and then walked away. I get that. That’s a decision everybody makes. My issue is, if we’re pursuing everything, we very often end up with nothing. If we’re pursuing someone coming later to fix it, later seems to never come. When we have a moment to fix thanks, we should fix as many things as we can. Then, come back later and fix the rest.
CAVUTO: That’s on Donald Trump, Senator.
LANKFORD: Again, he’s got an office that he’s running for. He’s got a campaign that he’s running. I’m already in office. I’ve got a responsibility to be able to carry on this. I think everybody cares about the future of the country. President Trump has a bigger picture of a lot of other issues he’s looking for. If we have a President Biden again, this never gets any better and I think President Trump sees this as a moment that if this gets fixed, then maybe a few people don’t vote and then we have a whole host of other issues in the future.
