Interview With Oklahoma Senator James Lankford
TAPPER: Welcome back. We're continuing our politics lead. President Trump has signed the new Russia sanctions bill into law, but called the measure -- quote -- "seriously flawed." In a statement, the president said the bill -- quote -- "encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate" and that -- quote -- "As president, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress." Joining me now to talk about this and much more Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. He serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. So, Senator, thanks for being here. Appreciate it.</s>SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R), OKLAHOMA: Glad to be here.</s>TAPPER: So, the president said the bill is filled with -- quote -- "clearly unconstitutional provisions" and that the Constitution puts foreign affairs in the -- quote -- "hands of the president." Are you worried at all about the president's commitment to these sanctions? He kind of had to sign the bill. It was going to become law either way.</s>LANKFORD: No, I'm not worried about his commitment to it. The issue was the same thing we had with President Obama before, that Congress put in place sanctions on Iran and the president, President Obama at that time, chose to pull those down. Something Congress is learning its lesson to say, if we're putting sanctions in place, there is common agreement among the American people we need to do this. Then we need to be able to leave it in place. And if the president wants to be able to put those sanctions down, he needs to come back to Congress. We all agreed together to put them in place. We should all agree together to be able to take them out.</s>TAPPER: And specifically the reason for imposing sanctions on Russia -- I know the bill also deals with Iran and North Korea, but Russia is because of the election interference and also because of its encroachment into Ukraine?</s>LANKFORD: Ukraine and Crimea, that's correct.</s>TAPPER: Yes.</s>LANKFORD: The Russian engagement all over the whole world, but they have also pushed back on us obviously in our elections from 2016. There is no reason to believe they affected our election. There is also every reason to believe they tried to, to be able to reach into election to be able to find it in every way they could. What's happening in Ukraine, what's happening in Crimea currently is a major issue. We think that there needs to be a pushback on Russia, and if there is not a forcible pushback, they're going to just keep going.</s>TAPPER: What do you make of the fact that President Trump disagrees with you, as far as I can tell, the entire Senate and House Intelligence Committees, everybody who has spoken about this from the intelligence community, including his own director of national intelligence, NSA, CIA, FBI, et cetera, and he doesn't accept this? He doesn't accept that Russia tried to interfere in the elections.</s>LANKFORD: Of late, he has made the comment about that it's most likely Russia, that he's seen all the evidence, that he thinks it's most likely them, but it could be some others that are also participating as well. I think that's good movement. I have no question that it is Russia that was actually trying to engage to interfere in our election. I would be glad to be able to continue to be able to show any evidence as well as all the other people around it.</s>TAPPER: On the question of Russia, there does seem to be just a question about his posture toward Russia. The president in recent days has had a lot to say about Republican senators, about Democratic senators, about the media. I don't think he's said anything publicly about Russia's retaliation for the sanctions, the insistence, the demand that the U.S. remove 755 individuals from the missions and embassies in Russia. Does that disappoint you? What do you make of it?</s>LANKFORD: It does disappoint me, but it also disappoints me that Russia is going to respond that way. I understand they're going to respond back to sanctions. We're stinging them because of what they have done in their actions. The issue of them trying to kick out 755 people that are Americans working there in Russia is their way to try to do a tit-for-tat, back and forth. It's nonsensical, quite frankly. They're still mad about us removing those facilities that the Russians had here in the United States. We have every reason that they'll be removed those two facilities and should not get them back.</s>TAPPER: Were those facilities being used for spy craft? Or is it being used for espionage?</s>LANKFORD: Yes, there is no question those facilities were being used for trade craft and for Russian spies. They call them vacation homes. They were gathering spots for that and they know it full well and so do we.</s>TAPPER: Sebastian Gorka told me a few weeks ago that the White House is considering giving them back, and he said something like, why not give cooperation and collaboration a chance?</s>LANKFORD: I think we've already given cooperation and collaboration a chance. There's an opportunity to be able to do that in a lot of areas. But I have no reason to help Russia in their spycraft against the United States. We are going to have to cooperate with them in Syria. What's happened over the last ten years in Syria is the United States have pulled back from that as a vacuum. Russia has run into that vacuum. If we're going to resolve the issues in Syria, we are going to have to work with the Russians. So, where we can work with them, we should, but I'm not going to help them spy on us.</s>TAPPER: You penned an op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" today. It's called "How to Make the Senate Work Again". Among other things, you write, quote: The Senate should not go to a 51-vote majority for every vote because the Senate is the one entity in the federal government where the minority view is heard and deliberation is protected. So, clearly, you disagree with President Trump who has said the 60- vote threshold should be disposed of and it should go down to 51 votes.</s>LANKFORD: Right, he and I have had this conversation. My proposal back is most people don't understand there are actually two 60 votes before the 51 votes actually pass the bill. There's the one, the motion to proceed to begin debate. Not only you have to 60 people agree to start debate, then 60 people agree to end debate and then you vote on the bill with just 51. My statement is, it's not rational for us to have two 61 votes or two 60 votes in every time. Let's let the majority party regardless of who it is, get on a bill, debate the bill, bring it up. If the minority is not heard, you don't get enough amendments, you don't get inside in that, then the minority can prevent it from going forward. But the majority party should always be able to get a bill and to be able to debate it and then the minority makes sure they get a hearing before it ends.</s>TAPPER: What would you say to Democrats in the Senate, your colleagues, who would say, Senator Lankford, you're talking about making the Senate work better. Last year, Senate Republicans wouldn't even allow a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee?</s>LANKFORD: Sure, I understand that full well. We go from the nomination process. That's currently in fact you're seeing right now. There's never been a time in the history of the Senate that we've had so few nominations work through and so little legislation that's been allowed because Democrats are preventing that. Typically by this point, any president has about 200 people on his staff. This president has 50.</s>TAPPER: How much of that -- and I really honestly don't know the answer to that. But how much is that is obstructionism and how much is it is the administration not nominating people?</s>LANKFORD: Oh, no, they have enough people to be able to go through the process. There are quite a few people who have gone through our committee process. They're literally waiting to get to the floor. And because 30 hours are required to be able to do the debate before a 51 passage, if the Democrats continue to require 30 hours for each person, it will literally take 11 years for the president to get his staff. My concern is that this has not happened before and it's setting another new precedent in the Senate, that every time there is a president that comes up, the president can't get his staff. And the gridlock that's happening in Congress is now a gridlock that is Washington, D.C.-wide. In every agency, they can't function because they don't have staff. We can't move it that way.</s>TAPPER: Another, one of your colleagues, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, was on yesterday. I want you to take a listen to what he had to say about what he thought was happening to the Republican brand because of President Trump.</s>SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R), ARIZONA: We've kind of, as Republicans, taken up an unfamiliar banner that, you know, is populism. And, you know, in some cases xenophobia, anti-immigration, protectionism. That's not familiar to us, and I don't think that that is a governing philosophy.</s>TAPPER: What do you think?</s>LANKFORD: Yes, I think every person represents their own people and where they are. I represent the 4 million people of Oklahoma. Those are the voices that I speak for and they've sent me here to Washington, D.C. to represent their voice. Their president has been elected. He has a role. Jeff Flake has been elected and he has a role. So, for me, it's not about Republican brand. It's about trying to identify the people at home and what their basic values are and trying to be able to coalesce those values here. So, I'm not so much worried about protecting the president. I don't know if that's a party issue or not. I don't come from a political background. The values coming from my state are the values I need to articulate here.</s>TAPPER: What do you think about his criticism, that the values or the Republican Party in his view now represents are too often xenophobic and indecent ones, ones that are protectionist and nativist and not what he's used to?</s>LANKFORD: Yes, there's no question that President Trump when he was elected had a very different message than the typical Republican that's out there. He ran as a Republican. In fact, there was some dispute early on whether he would run as a Republican, Democrat or independent because of his own background on that, and I think most people in America see him as a different kind of Republican with a different set of issues that he's bringing up. That's fine. He's the president of the United States. He's head of our party as president of the United States, de facto in that role. But I think people also know what basic Republicans' values are, dealing with people in poverty, dealing with opportunity for every single individual, trying to protect life at every stage of life, trying to find ways to be able to help people achieve new things they haven't been able to do before, whether it's education or whatever it may be. Those are basic values that will continue to articulate. We have differences in our party. There's no great shock with that, that we all don't see it the same. But that is the uniquenees of what we are. Republicans in Oklahoma don't think the same as Republicans in Ohio or New York or California. But we all share the same party and we're all trying to work through the differences in that.</s>TAPPER: All right. Senator, good to see you. Thanks so much for coming in.</s>LANKFORD: Good to see you as well.</s>TAPPER: Really appreciate it. We hear Republicans calling for bipartisanship. So, are Democrats open to making deals and getting some work done on Capitol Hill? We'll talk to Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, a leading voice in his party, right after this quick break.