After the tragic slaying of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) appeared on CNN to discuss the dangers of political polarization. In comments that many saw as insensitive, he blamed both sides instead of going after the left-wing radicals who killed Kirk, and as such brought an immense amount of MAGA criticism down upon himself.
In fact, several users contrasted these remarks with other Republicans who call for a massive investigation into the organizations linked to the dramatic assassination. Others called on him to step down and let a younger and more confident conservative take his place, arguing that he was an opprobrious RINO.
The initial post that started the online condemnation of Lankford featured the clip of him speaking to CNN and captioned it by saying, “Sen Lankford is asked to respond to Stephen Miller’s comments about law enforcement aggressively pursuing leftwing organizations that foment violence. He immediately goes into ‘both sides’ mode and leads off his reply talking about white supremacy.”
Starting off his comments, the controversial senator began, “Well, I would say if there’s someone preparing to be able to take out an aggressive act against someone or to be able to violate the law, that is the role of law enforcement to be able to protect Americans.”
Building on this point, he added, “We need to be careful in how we talk about this, whether it is talking about white nationalists and preparing to be able to attack and to be able to carry an attack, or to somebody like a Timothy McVeigh that hated the government intensely and in my state, 30 years ago, murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City.”
Refusing to identify the real, left-dominated source of the danger, Lankford said, “Or whether it is a leftist group that is interested in actually attacking a pro-life center that we saw several years ago, or whether it’s carrying out some other act of terrorism or trying to be able to intimidate people.”
Still not done, the Oklahoma Senator alleged, “We should have equal, equal application of the law to say, if you’re choosing to be able to carry out an aggressive, violent act, that should be something that we actually try to interdict anytime that we possibly can.”
"*" indicates required fields
Concluding his ineffective remarks, the Republican lawmaker said, “Again, thinking something, talking about something, is very different than carrying out that action. We have freedom of speech, but you do not have the freedom to be able to plan, prepare, and carry out an attack against another American, no matter what your ideology is.”
Watch the clip here:
Conservatives were enraged by these mealy-mouthed comments. “It’s time rino @SenatorLankford
retires ! James Lankford is a nice man. I bet he’d be a wonderful neighbor. But he is a moral coward and unsuited to leadership at this point in our country’s history,” one woman quipped in a representative post on the subject.
Concluding her comments, she added what is wrong with Lankford’s reasoning. “America needs bold, courageous, fearless leaders, not jelly-spined speechifyers who lack moral courage and want to be liked more than they want to do the right thing,” the comment noted. Many others chimed in with much the same message, hammering the RINO senator for his refusal to stand by MAGA.
Featured image from embedded video