WEBVTT

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Good morning, good morning, good
morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.

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We have US Senator for Oklahoma,
James Lankford on the phone, and

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the Senator, it's been very busy. I know that you've been working hard

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on a bill that would address our
southern border. Can you tell us a

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little bit about some of the things
that seemed to be kind of misconstrued.

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There seemed to be some misconceptions about
the bill. Yeah, there are a

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lot of misconceptions about the bill.
Good morning, everybody on it. Yeah,

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four months ago I started working across
the ABACA. We couldn't figure out

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a way to actually stop the border
chaos, and we press Democrats to be

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able to actually come to the table. Were successful at that, to get

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to the table, then get the
White House to the table. What we

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came out with on the other end
of it was a deal that would add

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more border wall. The border wall
would be designed according to Donald Trump's designs

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and the Donald Trump locations. It
would also include fifty thousand detention beds it

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and double our numbered deportation flights at
ice officers, border patrol officers, asylum

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officers, change the way we do
fentanyl screening at the border, adding non

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intrusive equipment that would actually pick up
finanyl, add sanctions to cartels that actually

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traffic in fentanyl, which is a
huge gap we have right now in our

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law. It would add a change
in the asylum law that would dramatically increase

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the difficulty of coming across our border
in claiming asylum, which right now to

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claim asylum today, people are walking
across the border right now saying I have

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fear in my country and they get
released for ten years. That's a law

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issue that we've got to be able
to change. So we increase the standard

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for evidence, added new three new
bars. In the process. We took

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away a lot of the appeals so
it doesn't take ten years. It takes

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days, weeks or months at the
latest before we can rapidly deport people.

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We change the parole issue, which
the Biden administration is releasing another fifteen hundred

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people today with a worker at the
border. We took that away. So

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we're not giving out pre work permits
at the border, which has been one

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of those things has been misconstrued.
People are saying we are giving about Actually

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we're stopping work permits from giving out. And here's the big one. The

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emergency authority that has been so misconstrued
or quite frankly by some intentionally. So

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the way the border is set up
under this new authority and the law that

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we're setting up is that if you
cross the border, you're apprehended, you're

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screened, and deported. So those
three steps apprehended, screened, and deported,

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and that happens from the very first
person that comes across. But once

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you get to five thousand, are
systems getting overwhelmed. So at that point

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we no longer screen you. We
just apprehend and deport you because we don't

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have time to do screenings anymore.
So first five thousand, apprehend, screen,

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deport. After that it's just apprehend
to port immediately. It's been told

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by so many folks that were allowing
five thousand people a day to come in

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and then stopping. It's actually entirely
the opposite site. It's kind of like

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the work permit issue. People are
saying you're allowing work permits. We're actually

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stopping work permits from being given away. So it's been a remarkable journey we

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went through all that got the legislation
together. I had two issues on trying

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to be able to move it some
folks who said even that's not enough.

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Though that makes a radical change in
where we are in border policy. They're

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saying, hey, I want even
more. And there are other folks that

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said they believed all of these misconceptions
of everything on it that were thrown out

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there. There was just so much
on the Internet and Twitter that he said,

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Hey, I just don't want to
take the political risk. At the

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end of the day, the borders
still opened today, just like it was

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yesterday, and it will be the
next day, in the next day until

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we actually take action on this,
and quite frankly, Joe Biden actually enforces

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the law that he has. But
there are problems in the law. Donald

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Trump had problems in the law.
Remember there were days when Donald Trump was

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president we had four thousand, sometimes
almost forty seven hundred people a day that

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were illegally crossing the border. He
was having the same struggles with the law

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in twenty nineteen and was asking for
changes in asylum. This bill would have

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given those changes that Donald Trump was
asking for in twenty nineteen. Is there

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any chance that this could be retooled, rewarded, or represented that with some

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of these things being to the forefront
of being misconstrued, addressed like heavily and

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perhaps taken back for another voter.
Did we start a new day? You

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know, I'm not sure they will
pick it up at this point. That

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what was funny was the leadership of
the House of Representatives. Within minutes after

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the text was announced, they said
we're opposed to it. So literally,

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there's no chances three hundred and seventy
pages, there's no chance any of them

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read it, but they just immediately
announced we're opposed to it. We're not

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going to do it. I think
a lot of this did fall on presidential

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politics, quite frankly, that people
are just saying, hey, in a

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presidential election year, I don't want
to deal with an issue this big.

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But the bigger issue is it's unresolved. So my push has been let's do

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as much as we can. We
may not get everything that we want in

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this, and some folks, if
I don't get everything else, I'll do

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nothing. The problem with doing nothing
is love. Another seven thousand people illegally

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crossing the border again today. We
have a chance to be able to stop

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that or dramatically slow it because many
of the things that we put into this

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law would have required this administration not
given them the option would have required this

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administration to be very different and how
they're actually mishandling the law right now.

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So I'm going to keep pressing.
I'm going to keep pushing on it because

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I think this is a major issue
that Americans want a solution to. People

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want this to be different for rightly
so with the chaos at our southern border.

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I don't know where everybody else is
going to go on that, but

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I, for one, am going
to keep working it. Senator, I

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want to thank you very much for
being able to take some time with us

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today. I know that a lot
of people have been wanting to get comments

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from you, but thanks for addressing
this very important issue with all of us

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back home. Yeah, I'm glad
to be able to do it. It

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really has been very misconstrued. Obviously, everybody's angry about what's happening the border.

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I am too. I actually I'm
a whole landsecurity on the border management.

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That's how I ended up with this
short straw to actually negotiate with the

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other side is because it is my
committee assignment that I'm in leadership bought.

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I've been to the border a dozen
times. I continue to be able to

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talk to leadership there the National Border
Patrol Council. When we released this bill,

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they took a look at it and
came back and said, this would

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be far better than the status quo, was their statement. So the folks

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on the ground that need to help, they read the bill and said this

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is a great solution for us.
They even made the statement it's not perfect.

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Quite frankly, they're still saying the
same thing I am. There are

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more things that I'd like to have. But their statement was also, it'd

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be far better than the status quo. I'm trying to move a Democrat president

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in a Democrat Senate where Republicans are
in the minority right now, to be

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able to move them as far as
I can move them, get as much

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done at the border as I can, and then go fight for the next

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part. How can folks get a
hold of you as if they have a

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question of comment about anything related to
Oklahoma as it pertains to the United States

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government. Absolutely, they're welcome to
be able to reach out anytime. They

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can go to my website Langford dot
Senate dot gov. Langford dot Senate dot

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gov. If you go there,
it'll have our phone numbers for all of

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our offices in Oklahoma and in Washington, DC as email addresses. There you

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can contact us. They can sign
up for our e newsletter. We put

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out that newsletter once a month just
to detail the things that we've worked on

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recently, to give the background on
all of those things. So you can

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go to social media at Senator Langford
involve us there. I would just advise

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you not to believe everything you read
on social media because just because it's post

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on social media doesn't mean it's true.