Senator James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, ripped his congressional colleagues on Sunday over opposition to a bipartisan southern border deal after election-year pressure from Donald Trump.
The GOP has, in recent months, intensified its focus on border security issues as the 2024 election cycle has come into focus, strongly criticizing Democrats and President Joe Biden over what they have characterized as a failure to address a supposed “invasion” of migrants at the southern border with Mexico. A new deal to address some of the issues has been percolating in the Senate with bipartisan support, but the deal now seems imperiled in the House after pressure from Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
In recent statements, Trump has urged Republicans not to accept anything less than a “perfect” border deal before the general election in November. Many observers and pundits have interpreted this as an attempt to deprive the Biden administration of a win on border issues so that Trump and other Republicans can continue to campaign on them. This pressure was echoed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, who said of the alleged terms of the deal that they would be “dead on arrival in the House.”
“We need a Strong, Powerful, and essentially ‘PERFECT’ Border and, unless we get that, we are better off not making a Deal,” Trump wrote on Thursday in a post to Truth Social, his social media platform.
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During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Lankford, who is the leading GOP lawmaker on the bipartisan border deal, decried his congressional colleagues over the refusal to support it in the wake of pressure from the former president.
After denying the rumors that the bill would “let a bunch of people in,” Lankford told host Shannon Bream, “It’s interesting, Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, Israel, and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. So we actually locked arms together and said, we’re not going to give you money for this, we want a change in law. And now it’s interesting, a few months later, when we’re finally getting to the end, they’re like, ‘oh, just kidding, I actually don’t want a change in law because of the presidential election year.'”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s team via email for comment.
The clip of Lankford’s comments was shared to X, formerly Twitter, by journalist Aaron Rupar, whose post was later shared by Representative Bill Pascrell, a leading House Democrat from New Jersey.
“A top Republican US Senator admits Republicans have no interest in solving any problems even their top priority if it might make Donald Trump look bad,” Pascrell wrote.
In a recent Senate GOP meeting, reports alleged that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed a willingness to abandon the border deal in order to embolden Trump’s ability to campaign on the issue of security.
“We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” the Kentucky Republican purportedly said. “We’re in a quandary.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.