Last updated on August 11th, 2024 at 12:11 am
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said on Wednesday that an unnamed but “popular” right-wing media figure recently threatened him for working on a sweeping immigration bill, claiming that the pundit said they’d “destroy” him if he tried to move the legislation before this year’s presidential election.
After Lankford made those comments on the Senate floor, MAGA radio host Jesse Kelly took credit for delivering the threat, while calling the Oklahoma senator a “eunuch.”
After four months of intense negotiations—and Republicans’ repeated insistence that any bill providing aid to Ukraine and Israel also include stringent border security measures—former President Donald Trump and his allies torpedoed the deal before the text of the legislation was even made public.
With the GOP frontrunner nakedly saying he wanted the border crisis to continue in order to damage President Joe Biden politically, Republicans soon fell in line and declared they would not support the bill they once demanded.
With the $118 billion immigration and foreign aid legislation “dead on arrival,” Lankford—who was one of the chief negotiators on the deal—lectured his GOP colleagues for refusing to “get stuff done and solve problems.” Prior to the Senate voting down the package on Wednesday, the conservative lawmaker chastised the chamber for only wanting to hold “press conferences” and not work across the aisle and pass legislation.
Speaking about the massive right-wing pushback the bill got after Trump came out against it, Lankford then noted that a conservative media personality privately approached him and demanded he scuttle the deal.
