Sen. James Lankford On Roy Moore Allegations: As A Dad Of A Teenage Daughter I Was Astounded

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) joined the Brian Kilmeade Show today to discuss the latest on tax reform, the Russia investigation, and allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Roy Moore and Sen. Al Franken. Listen to the interview below:

Sen. Lankford on sexual misconduct allegations against Sen. Al Franken and if he should resign:

I’m going to let them walk through the ethics of it and be able to resolve it. I’m glad that Senator Franken did come forward and say ‘hey, lets do the ethics investigation’. This is the first one they called for. Mitch McConnell was actually the first one that called for it and he kind of stepped back and said ‘yep, I’m not going to be able to fight this, lets go ahead and do the investigation and kind of lean forward into it.’ I would say what I’m pleased about is that the nation for the first time in a long time is looking at the moral behavior of its leaders and saying, that does matter. We all remember going through the 1990’s and everyone was talking about the Clinton scandal saying ‘it’s only about sex, it’s not a big deal, we just need to be able to move on.’ The nation’s waking up and saying, ‘you know what, these are real issues of moral character and we should look at how people behave privately because it will affect what they do publicly as well.’ I would hope in the days ahead that the nation will continue to be able to, no one is perfect, everyone has issues in their own personal life but the nation should look at your personal life and say, ‘that does matter about your own personal integrity.’ If you can’t have integrity in your personal life you probably won’t have it in your public life either.

Sen. Lankford on accusations against Judge Roy Moore and if he should resign:

Honestly I’ve followed it with great pain and with challenge to be able to watch what the people of Alabama are doing and I’ve had folks from Alabama that have contacted me that are friends I’ve known for years that have said ‘I’m in a really difficult spot because I don’t want the democrat that’s there because he doesn’t represent my values, but I’m not sure yet on Judge Roy Moore on what’s fact and what’s fiction and what to do.’ They feel like they’re absolutely in a horrible spot to try to figure out how to be able to make a decision on a vote that’s coming in the next three weeks. So I would hope that whatever Mitch McConnell’s doing he’s working with the republican party with their election group to be able to resolve this…The first thing that came out for me was as a dad of a teenage daughter I was absolutely astounded by the first accusation and then it just comes out over and over and over again. What I’ve told people is that every vote that I take I have to be able to explain to my children, and that’s not one I can explain to my children.

Sen. Lankford on if he was surprised by the way Sarah Sanders addressed Roy Moore allegations during White House Press Briefing yesterday:

I’m surprised by it as well when it first came out. I’m with you on it and the challenge of it. I look at it, the struggle the people of Alabama have is they don’t have somebody that shares their values they feel like personally, but they also have someone politically that shares their values, so they’re in a bad spot to say, if I vote for one, I’m voting for someone that teenagers and all these salacious accusations which in all likelihood are true, and then you’ve got another person, they don’t know how they’re going to vote and vote their values when they get there. That’s the difficult position the people of Alabama are in and they have to find out how they’re going to work together to be able to resolve this.