'The Interview': James Lankford Tried to Solve Immigration for the GOP

“采访”:詹姆斯·兰克福德试图为共和党解决移民问题

The Daily

2024-08-10

43 分钟
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Senator James Lankford discusses how political calculations killed his border bill, the evangelical Christian vote and preparing for life after Trump.
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  • From the New York Times, this is the interview.

  • I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro.

  • At a campaign rally in Georgia late last month, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to supporters about one of the biggest issues in this election, immigration.

  • She talked up her record as the former attorney general of a border state, and she made a promise as president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law and show.

  • Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.

  • That bill she was talking about was negotiated starting late last year by a bipartisan trio of senators.

  • The Republican in that group was Senator James Langford, a former baptist youth minister from Oklahoma.

  • Langford clearly has big ambitions in the party.

  • He's currently running for Senate leadership.

  • And for months, he worked on that immigration bill with Kirsten Sinema, the independent from Arizona, and Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut.

  • It was a rare show of bipartisanship, and after sign off from both Senate party leaders and an endorsement from the White House, the bill looked like it was going to become law.

  • It would have been the first major piece of bipartisan legislation on immigration in decades.

  • But then Donald Trump came out against it, saying he didnt want to give democrats a political win on such a sensitive issue during an election year.

  • And even though the bill contained most of the hardline policies the right had wanted, it became toxic in the GOP.

  • In the end, only four republican senators voted for it.

  • The bill tanked, and Langford was left holding the bag.

  • Ive covered the immigration system since the beginning of my career, so I really wanted to talk to Langford about his experience working so hard on this bill, only to see it fall apart.

  • And what that failed attempt at bipartisanship shows about the possibility of getting anything done by a republican party that is so beholden to Trump.

  • Here's my conversation with Senator James Langford.

  • Senator Langford, before you were in politics, you ran the largest baptist youth camp in the country, Falls Creek.