We are on the phone with Senator James Lankfort, and Senator thank you very
much for visiting with us today. No glad to be able to visit with
everybody. We've had a little bit of a storm damage here, but I
got to tell you Oklahoma's are resilient. These folks who know what to do
in a crisis. They know what to do in the situation, and I
got to tell you the neighbors are quite neighborly. Yeah, it is actually
it's painful that we know so well what to be able to do in a
crisis. I spent all day on Tuesday in Barnsdall, getting a chance to
be able to tour round, visit with folks, get a chance to be
able to pray with first responders and other folks families that are there, but
also get some time with a chainsaw to be able to help clear branches and
the limbs. And it is remarkable their homes and communities in sections of Barneshall
that there's just nothing left. It's just obliterated, and there are places where
there are large trees down houses and they just want to figure out how to
be able to restart. At this point in fact, I heard somebody say,
you get the emotion of I don't know where to start. And my
statement to them is start wherever you're standing at that point, because every direction
that you look, there's a need, and so the need for people to
be able to be there, to be able to walk alongside them, for
families connected with other families is tremendous. Senator, what's been happening in Washington,
d C. And folks back home can kind of catch up here with
you. Guys. It seems like every time I try to keep up with
you, it's like drinking from a fire hose. There's a lot going on.
Yeah, there's so much that's happening. Actually right now. Flew into
a DC late last night. We're working the rest of this week on the
FAA and the FAA authorization. For anybody think it's on a flight or that
deals with drones or deals with whatever it may be, deal with aviation,
This bill is extremely important to a large bill to be able to walk through
the authorization of what when you do, it's really important Oklahoma as well,
because we forget there are only two FAA centers outside of Washington, D C.
And one of them is in Oklahoma. It's the Mike Maroney Center actually
just west of Oklahoma City. That center does all of the training for air
traffic controllers. It does a lot of the research and background work for health
issues. So there's a lot that happens at FAA in Oklahoma, and so
this is an important bill for us to be able to get done. We'll
finish it up hopefully this week. All right. Yeah, a lot of
other things boiling up too. You know, we always have the border crisis,
and it just seems so frustrating that we get so close and then everybody
has to step back about you know, two or three steps and reassess and
start all over again. And nobody would know that better than you. Oh
yeah, it's incredibly frustrating to be able to go through all the issues on
the border and what continues to be the major issue. The media has stopped
talking about it. But let me give you, for instance, just two
days ago, with fifty eight hundred people that were illegally crossing our border.
That seems to be just a normal number, between six thousand and fifty seven
hundred or so. Every single day, day after day after day, the
numbers are still massive. They have not slowed down to the media stopped talking
about it. We still need to be able to resolve this with DHS leadership
again the last week to be able to talk more about how we can stop
this, including the group I call special interest aliens, that group that's a
designation their potential national security risk. These are people we don't know anything about,
but they're coming from areas of known terrorism. They're not on our terror
watch list, but we just don't know them, and so they're processed through
and released into the country like everyone else. And I'm trying to at a
minimum, stop that group from being released in the country. If I can't
get everybody stopped, I'm trying to at least get the folks that even at
the border we see the largest national security risks from getting stopped. And so
far I've not been able to get that done and get a one's attention to
be able to stop it. So I'm going to keep hammering away on this
because I think it's important for our national security. Senator. One thing that's
just really troubling a lot of people is that we don't think that our college
students know their history very well. Because we're starting to see a repeat of
something that popped up about one hundred years ago, and that's the anty Semitism.
Yeah, it's any Semitism. And I just think I can't even believe
that this is a part of the national dialogue at this point, but it
certainly is. This is something that started several years ago. It didn't just
pop up since October the seventh, when Hamas brutally attacked Israel. It didn't
just pop since then. It's been going on before that. Senator Jackie Rosen,
who's a Democrat from Nevada, she and I have been talking about what's
happening on college campuses for several years now and saying we have rising anti Semitism,
and a lot of people said, no, no, no, that's
not really happening. Well now everyone sees no, that's really happening. This
is a very big issue now Again in America, you have the right to
say something stupid. We have protected free speech. We can disagree on issues
and talk about them. But there is a threshold that you crossed when you
start intimidating people, when you start gathering as students. Is what's happening now
in trying to be able to block Jewish students from getting on campus or block
Jewish students from going to class. They've now done protests to the level that
they've been able to get graduation ceremony. Is to stop or get universities to
go online. This is not just free speech at this point. This is
intimidation and determined to be able to block someone else's right to free speech,
someone else's right to an education. So this has to stop. We've finally
seen some universities step up and to take charge of their own campus and to
actually be the adults on campus and to say we're not going to allow individuals
that are protesters to be able to block the rights of other students. That's
a good thing. We've seen that even last night in Washington, DC at
George Washington University, they've been completely out of control of the police actually moved
in last night and stopped all the protesting that actually happened because they've grown more
and more violent and disruptive, and it's about time. Well, you know,
we're seeing is a well funded organization. It didn't seem to be organic
at all. We're starting to see forty year old people posing as students.
We're starting to see a lot of tents that are very uniform, almost corporate
nature, like a big book purchases and things like that. This is obviously
well funded and they're playing a few people. It appears to me. No,
it's definitely well fundy and well organized. But I would also tell you
it's a different topic and issue. But on TikTok right now, the Chinese
government, the messaging they're putting out is fifty to one opposed to Israel on
TikTok of what they're actually delivering to people. So anyone who's who has a
TikTok account, which I discourage people from having that, anyone who chooses to
have that, what's coming at them and their feed is a constant anti Israel
feed And there's a sense that everyone thinks this way. And so for those
college students that live on TikTok all the time, they're getting this constant feed
up, you're doing the right thing. Keep attacking Israel, keep attacking Israel
because that's what the Chinese government is actually directing towards people. Over and over
again. Wow, that's incredible. Any last words you want to pass along,
just continue to be able to pray for folks in the area. I
know everybody in Bartlesville and all that reagion. We continue to be able to
do what we can to be able to help our news. Just don't stop
assume a long term issue. Everybody knows it well, so continue to be
able to find practical ways to be able to help in gaps that you have.
Thank you very much, Senator, appreciate your time with us here on
K one.