Senator James Lankford (R-OK) tonight reacted to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to the nation.
Excerpts
I’m Senator James Lankford. It is late tonight after the State of the Union address. I was sitting in the State of the Union Address which is really more of a campaign speech tonight than it was the State of the Union address. I’ve sat in quite a few State of the Union addresses now, and I’ve watched a lot from home as well. I’ve never seen one that was a pure campaign speech the whole time start to finish where President Biden continued to compare himself to “my predecessor.” I guess he wouldn’t say the name Trump the whole time and so it was just continual “my predecessor, my predecessor.” He never did compare some basic stats with quote unquote his “predecessor” like how many people illegally crossed the border during “his predecessor” and how many people are illegally crossing the border now, or what the strength of the economy was five years ago versus what it is now. He didn’t do those side by sides, but he found other ways to be able to drive it and while he talked a little bit about trying to unify the country, the speech was absolutely the most divisive speech I’ve ever heard during a State of the Union address. From the very beginning it was division and continued to be able to drive it that we’re a divided nation.
Right now there’s no question about that, but there’s no reason to try to use a State of the Union address to divide even more to drive literally drive a wedge in America even deeper. This is the kind of moment that you want somebody to be able to actually try to bring people together say hey we disagree on things, but let’s find ways that we can actually get to common ground and to be able to resolve things rather than continue to just drive this anger and wedge. He was angry from the very beginning and it kind of drove that anger the entire time.
Several things really stuck out to me. One is his drive towards a socialist agenda, and when I say socialist I mean real socialism on it. He continued to be able talk about how can we raise taxes on wealthy people. How can we raise taxes on companies and take that money and hand out things for free to other people. And even go so much into government control that he was talking about how can the government control the number of chips in a bag of chips and how big a Snickers bar is. So it’s not just that I use the word flippantly on socialism. Socialism means the government—the entity—the larger government controls everything in business and controls all of how you handle revenue. And they decide who gets money and who doesn’t get money. That was the absolute description that President Biden had all evening long.
He also kept talking about reproductive freedom. It’s an interesting euphemism for taking the life of a child and over and over again. He was he was saying “I’m going to go stand up for reproductive freedom” and people would stand and cheer at that and I think [do] they actually understand what they’re cheering is actually ending the life of a child? I’m not cheering for a child dying at the hands of someone else’s convenience. I don’t think that’s something that we should cheer but it was being cheered in the House of Representatives tonight during the State of the Union address.
The President also talked about in vitro fertilization—which by the way there is no controversy—there’s wide support for IVF across the entire Congress both Republican and Democrat on this. On this one issue that happened in Alabama the President conveniently left out that that one issue was resolved within two weeks and they’re trying to again drive this wedge as if Republicans don’t value the life of children which actually Republicans are the ones that do value the life of children. Not only that child that’s in vitro fertilization, but that child that’s just in normal pregnancy that’s out there that we celebrate that child as well. So literally back-to-back sentences, he can talk about celebrating the taking of life of one child and then talk about celebrating the life of a child from in vitro fertilization. Listen, I celebrate every one of those children. I don’t pick and choose which child is valuable and which child is disposable. They’re all valuable and so we were shocked at the way that he talked about the issue of throwing away children and calling some disposable and some valuable.
There’s also a real concern on how the President was talking about border security. Now obviously I’ve been very engaged in this issue of border security. He listed off some things from the border security bill and some different facts and figures from it. Those facts were true…but what the President conveniently left out were the authorities that he has right now that he’s choosing not to use. In fact he’s choosing to not use those so he could invite more people to be able to come in the country. The President kept saying, “I need more money, and I need more authorities for these things.” Well, let me give you for instance—he’s created two new parole authorities no president has ever done before that actually cost money. He could turn those off, and if he turned those off today, thousands fewer of people would cross the border tomorrow. Thousands on it but that’s something he could turn off today on that.
The President could deal with not just having hearings 10 years in the future. Whoever crossed the border most recently he could have that person be the next person that’s up for the hearing, and it would stop what’s happening at the border right now because people would know that they’re not going to just be released into the country for 10 years. They’re actually going to face a consequence right away.
But the President’s chosen not to do that. The President has authority to do remain in Mexico. He’s chosen not to do that. By the way, the President also has right now $600 million allocated to build wall, and the President’s not using those funds that have been allocated to him to actually build a wall. So while the President’s was acting like, “I’m helpless you’ve got to pass this bill or I can do nothing,” that’s not true. There’s a lot of things that he could do, right now, to dramatically slow the flow of the border. But there are issues that we do need to pass law on to be able to make it even better.
I’ve made a clear statement to President Biden in the past. I’ll make it again to him. If you would just enforce the border not just like how President Trump did, that’d be great. But do it at least as much as President Obama did. There are six times more people crossing the border every single day now than there were even under President Obama, so he was Vice President and he watched how President Obama enforced the border. Just do that and it would make us a much better, much more secure border. But there’s still a need for additional law to be able to deal with the next level for asylum and everything else on it. So yeah, I’m going to keep working on the issue of trying to be able to fix the broken areas of our law. But President Biden is conveniently leaving out the authorities he has right now and that every president before him has had that he’s choosing not to use as well.
We’ve got to be able to resolve those things also and that is his singular responsibility. Lots of issues of the speech deal with division and anger and quite frankly were disappointing as a just rank campaign speech not appropriate for this kind of setting. I would hope that people as they look at this speech see it for what it really is and then the American people will continue to be able to evaluate the direction that we’re going as a country. I want us to be a more hopeful more optimistic. Yes, a nation where we sit down and deal with our differences because we do have differences but to also try to actually solve those—not to make a bad situation even worse.
We’ve got to be able to resolve our differences and to be able to actually provide opportunities, and quite frankly, that’s not going to be because government’s more powerful and government has more control of how many chips are in a bag of chips, that’s going to be when the American people are empowered to make decisions on that. That’s what’s the real strength of our nation and that’s the part the President really left out. As well as the United States military is also an aspect that he just seemed to ignore tonight the strength of our military the morality of our police and what’s actually happening. He just seemed to turn away and did not deal with.
You know what I’m grateful for what they’re doing day-to-day to be able to protect our freedom, and I think we should continue to be able to do that and to support them in the future in a way that actually they understand. We’re standing with them, and we’re grateful for the sacrifices they put on the line so let me know your feedback as well about what you think about what’s happening, not only at our border and with our economy and with debt and with taxes and all those other things and the value of children….
