A Portrait Of Cowardly GOP Sniveling To Trump, In Three Acts

Hello, Oklahoma GOP Senator James Lankford.

Watch a Republican senator appear to have a backbone for five seconds, and then cave in record time to the petulant whims of the man-baby whose time in the White House is just about up! It is like a ballet, in three acts.

Part The First:

We were vaguely ... impressed is not the word, let's go with "cautiously and pleasantly surprised" ... last week when GOP Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma seemed to have a problem with the fact that President-elect Joe Biden is not receiving the President's Daily Brief yet, as the person who is President-elect should be read into our nation's highest intelligence. (And Joe Biden is the President-elect. There is no dispute about this among any serious people.)

Lankford told a local radio station in Oklahoma that if Biden wasn't getting the briefings by Friday (last Friday, not this Friday), that he would step in and do something about it.

It's not that we thought James Lankford was a good person or anything, but we were thinking maybe since he is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, something activated deep in his brain that said this is important to national security, and that even if he has to say whiny pandering words about it, even if he has to frame it saying that if Biden ends up winning, he needs to have been read into the intelligence, then it was good for him to do something about it.

Part The Second:

We don't know, but we bet James Lankford got a spanking from the White House, right on his bare bottom. We don't know if there was a Trump tweet we missed or something happened more quietly. Maybe somebody came to his Senate office dressed like a ghost and said "BOO!" Maybe it was like really obviously Ivanka Trump and it wasn't scary in the slightest, but James Lankford was scared anyway, because he is a weenus.

Something happened.

Part The Third:

By Saturday, Lankford had caved, as he explained to wingnut pretend news organization "Newsmax":

"I'm not in a hurry, necessarily, to get Joe Biden these briefings, it's been interesting how the media, the national media, not this network, but others have twisted this term 'step in.' I happen to chair the committee that oversees GSA, that is the entity that has to be able to make this call," Mr. Lankford said an interview with the pro-Trump Newsmax TV Saturday.

Oh he's suddenly not in a hurry. Those intelligence briefings? They are not such a big deal, after all. When he said "step in," he didn't mean the kind of "step in" where you do something . He just meant stick his foot in the door and ask the General Services Administration (GSA), which is responsible for kicking off the transition officially, how is it hangin' today.

He talked more to Newsmax:

"This race is not even close to being counted yet," Lankford added.

Joe Biden is up to almost 79 million in the popular vote, a 5.7 million vote lead, and has secured 306 electoral votes. But sure, we guess Lindsey Graham could convince a Republican secretary of state to throw out millions of legally cast ballots to steal the election for Donald Trump. It's a fluid situation! 

"So what I said I was going to step in on Friday is: How are you doing it? What are your metrics? How are you making decisions? What is the process? Those are the basic things. That's basic oversight, what a member of the Senate would do."

If they're chickenshit, we guess.

"And other networks blew this up, saying 'Oh my gosh, there's this Republican senator that's now shifting away and is reporting Joe Biden now to be president or opposed to the president," he continued.

The phrase you're looking for, senator, is "acknowledging reality."

Oh, but Lankford told CNN he totally did talk to the GSA Friday about them officially starting the transition so that things can get moving. You know, the same GSA where the Trump appointee in charge, Emily Murphy, is currently job-hunting, while refusing to officially start the transition.

"I did step in. I did talk to them on Friday," Lankford said, declining to provide details about whom he had spoken with and what they said. "My staff has been involved; I've been involved." [...]

"We talked through the process, where they're coming from. I talked through what I see is a good process, but I'm just not going to go into all the details," said Lankford, who chairs a Senate subcommittee that oversees the agency.

Unfortunately, Lankford says there's "NO WAY" the GSA can possibly ascertain (technical term) who is the president-elect, because of how the losing candidate is whining a lot.

In other news, Lankford's fellow GOP Senator Marco Rubio says Joe Biden is president-elect now, he guesses, so let's spend a week talking about his bravery until he caves and says the media took his remarks out of context.

[ Wall Street Journal / CNN / Newsmax ]

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