GOP Senator Says ‘Biden, in a Rare Moment, Was Correct’ to Spar With Republicans for Killing Bipartisan Bill

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told Newsmax on Wednesday that President Joe Biden was “correct” to spar with Republicans for killing a bipartisan bill to protect the southern border.

After Newsmax played a clip of Biden sparring with Republicans over the benefits of the bill at his State of the Union address in March, as Republican members of Congress in the audience booed and heckled him for supporting it, Lankford said:

Biden, in a rare moment, was correct in the things that he was actually laying out in that clip from the State of the Union address. It would have increased the number of border agents, it would have increased the number of asylum officers, it would have radically changed the way that we did actually the processing.

However, he argued that the bill ultimately failed to pass because Biden refused to take additional action to protect the border using his own authority.

“The problem was it all got drawn into the national politics because Biden wouldn’t do the most basic thing that he could do,” said Lankford:

All the executive orders that he did from the very earliest days of his presidency cause the crisis that we have right now. He refused to be able to actually implement the executive authority he already had, so Republicans were frustrated saying, ‘There are things Biden can do right now. We don’t want to do our part until he does his part,’ and so the whole thing began to fall apart on it. At the end of the day, Biden does have authorities that he could do right now that he’s choosing not to.

Lankford – who worked with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) on the bipartisan border bill – was caught nodding his head and mouthing, “That’s true,” to Biden’s State of the Union remarks in March as his Republican colleagues heckled and shook their heads at Biden for championing the details of the bill.

A few months prior in January, Lankford had accused his colleagues of tanking the bill “because it’s a presidential election year.”

Lankford received heavy opposition from within the Republican Party over the bill and was allegedly even threatened by a major conservative media figure.

Watch above via Newsmax.