About a year ago, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford took a strategic turn to the hard right and started using “Joe Biden’s crisis at the border” as a campaign rallying cry in a desperate attempt to appeal to racist Oklahoma voters and fend off a primary challenge from crazed right-wing Christian nationalist Jackson Lahmayer.
Here was his first tweet on the topic:
Since then, Lankford has issued hundreds of additional tweets that include the words “Biden” and “border.” He’s also routinely broached the topic in national media appearances and with cameras running on the Senate floor.
As we noted in the past, he's even taken his own trips to the border for convenient photo ops:
Well, I guess Lankford’s year-long campaign to use the border situation to pander to voters finally caught President Biden’s attention.
On Sunday, Joe Biden played a bit of political game theory himself and visited the border for the first time since he was elected President. Like any Presidential PR visit, he made sure to shake hands, meet with pre-determined people and take plenty of photographs.
As the guy who spent a year yelling about the crisis at the border, you’d think Lankford would have been happy to see the President finally visit, but shockingly, he instead used it as an opportunity to ask “what took so long" and complains about the President taking photos:
Yep. Joe Biden finally took a page from Lankford’s playbook and went to the border for a photo op and Lankford complained about it.
I know we expect hypocrisy from politicians, but that takes things too far. It would be like Lankford complaining about teens losing their virginity at a Joe Biden-sponsored Church Camp! It happened all the time under Lankford’s watch at Falls Creek. Plus, James does have weird views on consent.
Then again, what do we really expect?
Politicians use social media to posture and pander with propaganda and political distortion, not tell the truth or be sincere.
Lankford can’t really tweet something like “I’ve been using the border as a pandering campaign issue for a year, so I’m happy to see President Biden visit the border and witness this crisis firsthand. I can’t wait to work with him on a non-solution to this never-ending issue, so both sides can continue to use it as a divisive wedge issue for years to come,” because it would be too honest.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
