Senator James Lankford (R-OK) On Why President Trump Should Support Jeff Sessions For The Senate

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) joined Brian Kilmeade live from KRMG in Tulsa, Oklahoma to discuss the latest on the democrats impeachment inquiry, supporting Jeff Sessions decision to run for his old senate seat in Alabama, what New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg running for president means for supporters of the 2nd Amendment, not being offended by Senator John Kennedy saying it must suck to be Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and how passing the USMCA would have a positive impact on Oklahoma.

Plus, Senator Lankford says he will be supporting President Trump in 2020 because of his policies.

Listen here:

Brian Kilmeade:
With me in studio is Senator James Lankford. How do I know that? Because he’s right here. I could touch him, but he doesn’t want me to know.

Senator Lankford:
No.

Brian Kilmeade:
And that’s his insistence. And I’m on the road in a beautiful performance studio at KRMG in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s my third or fourth time back here. At noon, I’ll be signing Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers. But we’re talking about everything in the country, taking questions from the audience and at home. And, Senator, we’ve finally lined it up for your schedule. Before I get to you, here are the big three things that is on Senator Lankford’s mind.

Voiceover:
Now with the stories you need to know is Brian’s big three. Number three.

Male Speaker: There is largely an acceptance even among House Democrats that we are where we are and we’re most likely to have a partisan impeachment process. Any hope that they were going to bleed off. A significant number of Republicans has largely died. This could just be purely partisan.

Brian Kilmeade:
And my feeling it’s going to be way too routine in the future. Impeachment push. What’s the latest? One week from public hearings both dig in and Ambassador Kent testifies.

Voiceover:
Number two.

Jeff Sessions:
Jeff Sessions here. Did I go on CNN and attack the president? No. Have I said a cross word about the president? I would not and I’ll tell you why: the president is doing a great job for America and Alabama.

Brian Kilmeade:
Okay. Let’s see how that flies. Senator Jeff Sessions, reboot. You just heard it. Sessions once back into the Senate. Senator Lankford, who had him as a colleague. He had him without — not a colleague. What does he think will happen? He was not a strong A.G. Would he be able to brush off Trump’s comments like Sessions has? Trump would he be able to brush off what Sessions has done, he claims to him in the past? Very interesting.

Voiceover:
Number one.

Male Speaker: Man, what does this say about the state of the race of the Democratic field right now? He’s looking at the field of Democrats and scratching his head, saying, we can’t win with this. Democrats can’t win with this. It’s a pretty damning assessment of the current field.

That’s how Michael Bloomberg views the field of candidates on the left as he sets out plans in motion to join the race for the Democratic nomination. Is it too late? Is he too old? And what does it do to the race? Now, without any further ado, he calls Oklahoma home. He represented them in Washington. And I have a hunch without asking me directly, he prefers to be here than there. Senator James Lankford, ladies and gentlemen.

Senator Lankford:
You have had the opportunity to come to one of the greatest places in all of America to be able to come to Tulsa.

Brian Kilmeade:
With the greatest people.

Senator Lankford:
You know what? I laugh at the rest of the country. They think great barbecues, is the McRib sandwich. Welcome to where real barbecue I come from.

Brian Kilmeade:
So, in other words, Senator Lankford, if there’s a drive-thru, it can’t be good.

Senator Lankford:
Well, we have drive-thru’s at Great Barbecue. There’s actually more barbecue in Oklahoma than anywhere else in the country per capita. This is the epicenter of great eating. And so hopefully you get a chance to enjoy some absolute fantastic folks and some great food while you’re here. Welcome.

Brian Kilmeade:
All right. Thank you so much. You’re always so good to the show. But to see you in person in your home state is fantastic. So, — and you are so well read and so well versed in all the issues of the day. And as a lot of people here know, you speak your mind. You like the president — you don’t agree with everything he does.

Senator Lankford:
Right.

Brian Kilmeade:
Jeff Sessions — you used to work with him — He wants back in. Was he a good senator?

Senator Lankford:
He actually was a good senator and did a lot of great work and was very, very engaged on policy areas. Obviously, he was the first supporter of the president and he was the key supporter for the president among the senators early on. And President Trump rewarded him by saying hey come be my attorney general, which was a dream job for him, always as a former U.S. attorney, an attorney himself. It was a dream job to be the A.G. and then the president — he obviously didn’t get along well. And the biggest issue that I really heard from the president was he wished that he would have known early that the attorney general at that point could not have supported him on the Russia campaign. But Russia, the whole conspiracy, and all that fast that came up. But Jeff told me flat out, I didn’t know I couldn’t do that either until I got there. And all the attorneys said, hey, you worked on the campaign. You can’t be the investigator for the campaign if you worked on the campaign. And so, he had to recuse himself, which frustrated the president and frustrated Jeff.

Brian Kilmeade:
Should’ve quit.

Senator Lankford:
Well, that’s the big challenge, then, is to say that. And obviously the president –you work at the president’s pleasure at that point as everybody does.

Brian Kilmeade:
Right. And Doug Jones being there in a very red state, you could have had 54 seats instead of 53. And it’s going to be it’s not going to be that easy to hold onto the Senate this time. And they are pouring a lot of money against GOP candidates.

Senator Lankford:
There’s a lot of money that they’ve poured in against GOP candidates; they really want to take back the Senate. You talked about Michael Bloomberg earlier jumping into the Democratic race. Michael Bloomberg dumped in a ton of money, including in Oklahoma, to be able to try to win Democrat House seats. Last time, that was his big focus. But he was also laying the groundwork, obviously, for his presidential campaign at that time.

Brian Kilmeade:
Senator Lankford, this is Oklahoma. This guy wants to take everybody’s gun away.

Senator Lankford:
No, he’s pretty clear about that, that he wants to take everyone’s gun away, that he wants to be able to — he knows what’s best for Americans and he’s going to tell them what’s best.

Brian Kilmeade:
And that and green technology in the point where he actually destroy the energy industry, which mattered so much to people here. And to me as an American, because it would provide us independence and security and we saw what would happen when those Saudi oilfields blew up, nothing happened. And we were Okay. I remember the 70s — I remember being in grammar school, my teachers in such long lines crying because they were late, because they ran out of gas — we didn’t forget. And we thought that’s going to be our future. And look what’s happening 2019.

Senator Lankford:
Oh, yeah, very different now. We export oil now; we export export natural gas now. That changed the world market where the United States of America is the big dog in the world energy market now. It used to be Saudi Arabia, but it’s us.

Brian Kilmeade:
Just the last thing on Jeff Sessions. If the president says to you, what do you think, Jeff? You think I should just put this all behind him and support him? What would you tell him?

Senator Lankford:
I think he should put it all behind him. I do. He can choose to support who he wants to support. But the president’s been really good actually in the past, saying when he’s upset with somebody, he doesn’t hide that. But he also puts some things behind him and said, okay, that was a long time ago. Got that resolved. You could look at it, for instance, Mike Pompeo. Mike Pompeo was not on President Trump’s team during the election, but the president loves Mike Pompeo and what he is doing. So, you can see some people that he looked behind it and said, okay, you didn’t support me then, but you do now. And let’s get working.

Brian Kilmeade:
Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, were not on the Trump train and they are now. So, I think I would love to, you know, he’s a great person. One thing about him, you could not like him as attorney general, and I didn’t. But he’s a good guy.

Senator Lankford:
He is a good guy. And he did work really hard as a senator.

Brian Kilmeade:
All right. Well, we’ll see. So, on this impeachment push, are you somebody who still needs to have more information or do you think that you will? Do you know how your vote when it gets to you? Because I believe it’s inevitable. It’s going to get to you.

Senator Lankford:
Oh, it’s coming. Democrats have been focused on impeachment from day one. Washington Post headline, January 20, 2017, first day of President Trump’s presidency was about impeachment of the president that that the investigations have already begun. So, they’ve been focused on this. They have 100 Democrats locked in all about Russia than they did two and a half years of investigation on Russia. No conspiracy, no obstruction of justice. Then they’ve now shifted over to Ukraine and they’re all focused on that and they’ve learned their lesson. They did Russia investigation in public. So, now they’re doing this one in private. And they’re going to try a totally different tactic to try to do everything behind closed doors, only release out what they want you to see. The testimony that they have., and it’s pretty clear, the folks that are coming forward are their “best folks” that they’re going to bring forward first. All these folks are saying, well, we perceived the president wanted this, but the only person that asked the president, there’s one person that actually asked the president was quid pro quo. And the president answered no, there’s not.

Brian Kilmeade:
And that was Ambassador Sondland.

Senator Lankford:
That’s right.

Brian Kilmeade:
And he said the president is in a foul mood. You remember specifically. And he said just said, just tell him to do what he ran on. Well, you know what that guy ran on? As a comedian he won. Evidently, he’s funny — he looks funny. But he ran on gutting corruption. I hear he’s doing a great job. So, that is okay. But does this whole thing bother you — having an unnamed — like Rudy Giuliani walking through? It doesn’t.

Senator Lankford:
No. Every president has both his his foreign policy team from the State Department, and then they’ll have other folks that they’re going behind the scenes that that’s very common. He’ll have friends, relationships and say, okay, I know somebody who does business in that area, so I’m going to call him because I have a personal connection with him. So, you have a State Department team. You also have your other emissaries on that. That doesn’t bother me.

Brian Kilmeade:
Senator, I’m just going to — you can comment if you want to — but there’s such a fatigue on these investigations because nothing gets done. Right. We don’t debate policy. I’m not mad at you about missile defense or happy that you’re supporting our policy of making NATO pay 2 percent. I’m not talking about the Iran policy of pulling out Syria. Those are things that affect us. We’re not talking about energy policy, we’re not talking about immigration — that affects us. But this stuff doesn’t affect us. I mean, this is just seems like a personal, vindictive attack. But it also emerged that this Mark Zaid lawyer who represents the whistleblower. It turns out he is all over this story. And his tweets emerge after his name emerged over the weekend saying my whistleblower will speak — will actually answer the questions of Republicans in writing. Listen to it. Turns out these tweets show an impeachment process underway in phases. And he expected CNN to lead it. Guy Lewis is a U.S. attorney, was on with Laura last night, cut .

Guy Lewis: When I first went back. I went back and looked at the complaint. It is so clear to me that a lawyer wrote this complaint beginning to end. And if it’s Mark Zaid, if it’s this guy who wrote the letter to the president today, this is the same lawyer who two years ago, January 2017, says — these are his words, not mine — “a coup has started. Impeachment will follow immediately.” July, a few months later, “I predict CNN will play a key role in Donald Trump not finishing out his terms.” Same month in July, “we’ll get rid of him and his supporters.” His words, “the coup will occur in many steps.” That to me is collusion.

Brian Kilmeade:
That was an opinion. He was telling you what was in the tweets. So,, I mean, when you guys talk, how does that make you feel? For those people who say, well, Donald Trump’s not my speed, but I appreciate what he does, does that make you want to double down with him on this?

Senator Lankford:
Oh, no. It just makes you want to get the basic facts out. It’s just facts and information. That’s why the president over and over again is tweeting. Read the transcript. All he’s trying to say is actually look at the facts and all these accusations and all these people saying, well, this what I perceive. This is what I thought. The president is just saying we released the transcript right at the very beginning. You want the key fact? There it is. Read that one and we’ll be able to find out there is no conspiracy here. And on top of that, aid did go to Ukraine and there was no statement back from Zelensky — President Zelensky of Ukraine saying anything about Clinton, anything about Hunter Biden. And so all this “they weren’t going to get it until” its actually proof not — so not only is there no accusation of real quid pro quo from anyone that did it. That clearly didn’t happen. If you want a president that’s helped Ukraine the most, it’s been President Trump. President Obama gave Ukraine blankets and MREs and said eat and be warm in a shooting war. President Trump has been the one actually giving lethal aid.

Brian Kilmeade:
And Senator Lankford, what’s so important is the President of the United States, I don’t love to pull out Syria. I don’t love the way he did it. But all I could say is the for the people that are criticizing — when I see Susan Rice up on television, when I see Brennan on television or anybody to do with the Obama administration when they allowed ISIS to take root by pulling out, when they allowed the red line not to be reinforced, when Crimea was taken from Russia. They did nothing except sanctions, said they were eventually gonna have to give it up. And then when they went into the Ukraine and stayed using their rebels supported, nothing happened. So, the only people I don’t want to hear from, the people I keep hearing from, and that’s people with the Obama administration saying how their hearts go out to the hard working, tough Ukrainian people. That aid might have been delayed until September 11th of this year. Excuse me. You didn’t say a word when President Obama did nothing when they needed him most because they had no arms, because a lot of huge sections of the country was just taken over.

Senator Lankford:
Yeah. When the Russian tanks rolled in, the Obama administration just said to the Russians, here’s a letter that we think you shouldn’t do this. What the Trump Administration has done is given ability to actually have anti-tank missiles to go push Russian tanks actually out.

Brian Kilmeade:
So, Senator John Kennedy and Eric at one point will bring this up, came out on the stump yesterday, two days ago with the president in Louisiana. And you get fired up when you with the president. And he came out and said, what part about dumb, basically does Nancy Pelosi not understand? Here is what Senator Kennedy. Said.

Senator Kennedy:
— our Democratic friends have done for him? Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to impeach him. I don’t mean any disrespect, but it must suck to be that dumb.

Brian Kilmeade:
Senator, this crowd isn’t offended. We’re coming to you from KRMD in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma. Are you?

Senator Lankford:
No, I’m not offended. But I do have to tell you, I have a running joke with John Kennedy all the time because he’s from Louisiana and half the time I understand what he says anyway. We just actually met yesterday morning. We’re talking a little bit about the rally before and he had one of the staff members with him and asked if his staff member was going to come translate, John, as well as we’re talking back and forth. But he is a remarkable leader and super engaged, and obviously, you’re right — you hang out with the president, you get a little bit fired up as well.

Brian Kilmeade:
Here’s what he said when he was asked to apologize by everybody.

Reporter:
Did you really mean no disrespect when you said that Speaker Pelosi —

Senator Kennedy:
Sure I did. Let me tell you why I said that in part. What Speaker Pelosi has done here — and I think she is the the prime principle behind this impeachment — I think she has — you have to be careful what you ask for. I didn’t mean it as disrespectful. I didn’t mean it as disrespectful at all. If people think they’re disrespectful, this is America. You’re entitled to your opinion.

Brian Kilmeade:
And we got his opinion. Senator, you’ve already weighed in. He just smiled at me. Okay tha’s his thing; that senator look — let him handle that. We’re going to come back and have a few more minutes with Senator James Lankford, who was kind enough to make this stop a part of his morning. And we appreciate it. Thanks, Senator. Don’t move. Back in a moment from beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is the Brian Kilmeade Show.

Senator James Lankford with us for a few more minutes in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma, KRMD Studios where in about 90 minutes I’ll be signing at Barnes and Noble Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers. Senator, I want to put some checkmarks in Congress. Can we get the USMCA passed and would that matter to the people of Oklahoma?

Senator Lankford:
Oh, it would absolutely matter. Let me make a quick side comment. First, though, that bumper music coming in, I’m looking across this great credit Tulsans and watching toes tapping as that bumper music — you were right on target with that. Yes. USMCA agreement does matter. Not only in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but all of Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, we have over $2 billion worth of exports that go to Canada and Mexico. So, it is a big deal. Our number one trade partners, Canada, Mexico, from Oklahoma, as it is for a lot of different parts of the country.

Brian Kilmeade:
So, what’s stopping it?

Senator Lankford:
Well, there’s a lady, named Nancy Pelosi we’ve already discussed and she is the one that’s solely holding up the USMCA. Mexico’s already approved it both in the executive agreement. Their legislature already approved it. Canada saying they’re ready to go as soon as we’re ready. Pelosi’s had it on her desk for 13 months now and has refused to act on it. Constitutionally, it has to go through the House first before the Senate can vote on it. There is no reason they can vote on if she put it on the floor today, it’d had more than 300 votes.

Brian Kilmeade:
So, they get Democrats votes. She’s just choosing not to give the president a win. But it’s hurting us as Americans. Unbelievable. It’s outrageous. Lastly, there’s this Book Anonymous out right now by some real courageous person who thought it’d be a good idea to rip the president but not give their names. They talk about the president declining, was stumbling, slurring his words. You’ve known him now pretty well for three years.

Senator Lankford:
Yeah. I’m around him all the time. I’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen him stumble. Never assume slur. Never seen him in any kind of decline like what they’re describing. I know what they’re trying to imply at that point. Of all the times I’ve been around the president, I’ve never seen a thing like that. And I’ve been running late at night, early in the morning, in the afternoon and never seen it.

Brian Kilmeade:
Does he have your support for reelection? He does, actually. And based on the policy, just look at what’s happened with trade, with taxes, with what’s happening in criminal justice reform. I can go on and on and on — the things that he’s been able to accomplish are really amazing for the American future.

Brian Kilmeade:
And for what I can tell the people of Tulsa, Oklahoma and I know all of Oklahoma have to be happy of a consequential senator who wants to get involved in every issue that matters to our country. Most importantly, the best decision you made to come here today. Can I just say that?

Senator Lankford:
Thanks, Brian. Good to see you again.

Brian Kilmeade:
Senator James Lankford.