- Well, Oklahoma SenatorJames Lankford joins us

from the Russell Rotunda

to tell us more about the road ahead.

And Senator, let me ask you this.

Is there any possibilityof some bipartisan support

for any of the legislation,

or is the idea to jam it down your throat?

- Currently, they're trying to be able

to just ram everythingdown our throat on it.

Yes, there's absolutely places

where we have bipartisan cooperation.

Not everything is a partisanissue in Washington, D.C,

nor across America.

There are a lot of areaswhere we have common ground

to be able to work on things together,

but they seem to be just intent

on trying to ram the most farleft policies through you,

and to be able to find a way

to be able to destroy the senate.

And when you talk aboutdestroying the filibuster,

you're really talking about destroying

what the senate hasbeen for 200 plus years,

because they have an agendato be able to change America

into their image, ratherthan to be able to function

under who America is.

- Well, you are lookingat two senators, matching,

and system, and they have got the whole.

I mean, is there a possibility

that that they'll doaway with the filibuster?

Can it happen that you can see now?

- It could happen here.

They really need 51 votesto be able to do away

with the filibuster.

The filibuster is set up to make sure

that minority voices alwayshave a voice in America.

And it's unique to the senate.

The house is a simple majority vote.

Of course, the White House,very one of the agencies

do what the president asks them to do.

In the Supreme Court,it's a majority vote.

But in the senate, bothsides have to be able

to have some cooperation together.

You have to get threefifths of the Senate,

which is 60 votes to be ableto start a debate on an issue,

or to be able to stop debate on an issue.

But that forces the bipartisan cooperation

to make sure everyone in America is heard.

Democrats will talk publiclyabout they want minority voices

to be heard, but in the senate,they're literally working

to be able to stop the minority

in the senate from ever being heard.

So the goal of this is this is a place

that slows things down in the senate,

so we talk about it to makesure that we're dealing

with the common ground issuesthat really define America.

- You were down at the border recently.

It looks like there's a narrative

that there was no problem,

and it's not really a big problem now.

Is it really the crisisthat the we hear about?

- It is a crisis, Pat, it's significant.

I was in Arizona a week anda half ago to be able to look

at the wall constructionthere of that whole system.

As you know, presidentBiden, the first day he was

in office, stopped wallconstruction that day,

and said no more can happen.

Well, I got down to Arizona tosee what does that look like.

Literally the fence isup for miles, and miles,

and miles, and miles.

But all that's anincomplete are the gates,

these maintenance gates, sothey can go on either side

of the fencing to be able to maintain it.

So you have these large openingsthat have not been put up,

all the steel is there.

So all it would take is a fewdays to be able to finish it,

and president Biden stopped that.

He also stopped theinstallation of the technology,

cameras, lights, groundsensing technology,

all of those things, he stopped,

and said, we don't wannainstall those things anymore.

Literally we've already paid for it,

all the materials arethere, it's ready to go.

But he stopped it.

There's only one reason tobe able to leave a fence up,

but leave that gates open, orto not install the technology.

It's because he wants people to be able

to come through that border.

I'm headed to Texas this weekend,where we've seen thousands

and thousands ofunaccompanied children coming

across the border becausepresident Biden on his first day

in office said, if you're17 years old and down,

you can come into the country.

Now, that was prohibited duringthe Trump administration.

Now president Biden has said,

if you're 17 and younger, you can come in.

And so what has happenedis we have thousands

of people that are 17 and down.

Most of them, 15, 16, 17 year old males

that are coming across the border.

There's no facilities tobe able to handle them,

and they're releasingthem into the country.

- When you say they release them,

I understand they're putting them on buses

and taking him them far aslike Middleton, and Texas,

and all the way into theHeartland of America,

and then dropping them out.

I mean, how can we sustainsomething like that?

- Yeah, it's a terrible practice.

The way they're set upright now is they'll,

if a, let's say a 17 year oldguy comes across the border,

he has a phone number of anuncle who lives in Chicago.

They'll say, here's where I wanna stay.

They'll contact his uncle,do a background check on him.

They don't verify whetherthey're also legally present

in the country or not.

And then they'll actually take them

to Chicago and drop them off there.

If they're an adult 18 and older,

they don't have any placeto hold them anymore.

So they're just releasingthem into the towns

that are nearby and saying,show up for a court hearing

in some future date, orfor the first time ever,

the Biden team is saying,

we don't have time to be ableto pick a court date for you.

We'll contact you later to beable to get you a court date.

And they're just releasingthem into the country,

with no way to actuallybe able to contact them.

So these are people literallycrossing the border illegally

as adults that are beingreleased into the country,

or that are 17 years old,

that they're actuallytransitioning to another relative

that's in the country, also illegally,

and saying, show up for a courthearing two years from now,

which obviously most ofthose folks don't show up

for the hearings.

- That's a horrible situation.

Let me ask you something else.

The democratic agendaincludes a D.C statehood.

So if they give statehood to D.C,

which they would, it shouldtake a majority of the votes

to do it, but apparently they can do it

with a simple majority, thatgives them two more senators.

Then they're talking abouta statehood for Puerto Rico,

which is two more.

They decided that that'll flip the balance

almost permanently.

What can you all do to stop that?

- Yeah, we need to continueto be able to stand up

and speak out on this issue.

This is not about giving voting rights

to people in Washington, D.C.

This is about taking over the senate,

adding more democratic senators into D.C.

Washington, D.C is one 10th of the size

of my hometown of Oklahoma City.

One 10th of the size.

They're talking aboutmaking a state from a city.

If the people of Washington D.Cwanna be able to have access

to more voting rights,

than Washington D.C canbe absorbed into Maryland.

The Southern part of Washington, D.C,

decades and decades agowas absorbed into Virginia.

We can take the rest of Washington, D.C,

absorb it into Maryland.

And so those folks can haveseparate voting rights on it,

but keep then the core ofWashington D.C still the district.

So we've changed the boundaries

of the district before decades ago.

That's perfectly fine, butcreating an entirely new state

out of the district ofColumbia is inconsistent

with the United States constitution.

And it just begs the definitionof what a state really is.

For something so tiny as asmall city of Washington, D.C

to be defined as a stateshould not be what we do.

So I've got no problem

with those folks actuallygetting a voting right,

but they need to becomea part of Maryland,

as the Southern part of D.C became part

of Virginia years ago.

That's a better way to be able to do it.

- Senator, I understand the North Koreans

just launched a missile.

They're gonna test this.

The Chinese are testing this in Taiwan.

We're being tested right around the globe.

Do you think the presidentis up to the task?

- Well, we're about to find out on that.

Our Secretary of State metwith Chinese leadership

in Alaska just last weekend,and the Chinese stepped up

and just gave a tonguelashing to the United States,

of which our Secretaryof State did not stand up

for our defense of whowe are as Americans.

And so clearly the Chinese are pressing

on the United Statesto be able to back off

and leave them alone whilethey are stripping houses

of worship from their freedom,

they're imprisoning Muslimsin a section of China,

and putting them inconcentration, reeducation camps,

all kinds of human rightsviolations that are there,

obviously stealing ourintellectual property

from us as a country.

And they continue to be ableto press against Hong Kong.

The people of Hong Kong havelost their freedom entirely

in just the last few months.

And the last bastion ofthat was stripped away.

So yes, China is definitely on the move.

The United States needs tobe able to step up to this,

and to be able to speak out forcefully

for basic human rights anddignities for the Chinese people.

- Senator, thank youso much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

God bless you, thank you.

- God bless you as well.

Good to talk to you again.

- Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma,

a distinguished member of that body,

and I hope there are manymore like him in the congress.