Sen. James Lankford Reacts To Biden Withdrawing From Reelection, Calls For Head Of Secret Service To Step Down

Oklahoma’s GOP leaders are still reacting to President Joe Biden’s announcement to step down from the 2024 presidential election.

Some lawmakers are questioning Biden’s ability to run the country for the remainder of his term, while others, like U.S. Senator James Lankford, are expressing a lack of faith in the Democratic Party as a whole.

Lankford joined News 9 Monday morning to discuss the latest developments in the 2024 presidential race.

While many people have said Biden should drop out due to his age, Lankford said he thinks the reason he trailed in the polls is due to policy, not performance.

"It's the policies that are the issue. It is the high prices, it's our weak performance on the international stage, it's the open border, it's all of those issues that people are so frustrated with and switching to Kamala Harris won't change that," Lankford said.

Lankford said he was not surprised to see him withdraw from his reelection campaign.

"A lot of Americans for a long time have seen this coming," Lankford said. "A lot of us in the Oklahoma delegation have seen this coming for a while."

He said he thinks Democrats pushed for it because they knew he was falling behind in the polls.

"I think their concern is that he continues to fall farther and farther behind in the polls; they want to try to find some other way to be able to win by changing at the very end," Lankford said.

He also said he thinks Democrats have been saying they want an open primary but do not necessarily want Kamala Harris to take over in Biden's place.

"Democrats nationally saying they want an open primary every time they've said they want an open primary, it's really them saying 'I don't want Kamala Harris to be the person that's the default,' because they know that she has the exact same policies, exact same perspective as President Biden has had," Lankford said.

The Secret Service Chef Kimberly Cheatle will testify in front of Congress on Monday on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

Lankford said he wants answers, and the Secret Service has been unwilling to give him and others any.

He said his main concern is that if the Secret Service was notified of a suspicious person, why did they allow the President to go on stage?

"Why did they let someone on the roof? Why didn't they have a counter-sniper on that roof? Why didn't they actually follow through on some of the leads of a person at the event just a couple of hours before who had flown a drone over the events and was tracking the location?," Lankford said. "All of those mistakes were made, but none of them bigger than saying there was a suspicious person in the crowd they had to identify with a rangefinder that was trying to be able to get scoping in, that they put the President on stage and put him in danger anyway."

Lankford said he is calling on Cheatle to resign and wants the Secret Service members making decisions that day held accountable.

"There were critical mistakes made in the preparation, the oversight of this, we've got to be able to change the direction of it, so there does need to be change at the top," Lankford said. "There also needs to be accountability for who was on the ground that day making decisions.