Republican Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) spoke with the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel on Tuesday for the opinion section’s podcast. The two covered a wide range of topics including whether or not President-elect Donald Trump will get all of his cabinet nominees confirmed and focused particular attention on how Tusli Gabbard might sway senators to her side.
“Of those 15 cabinet picks he made, cabinet leaders, what number do you think get through?” Strassel asked at one point.
“It could be all of them actually. It’ll be interesting to see. I don’t hear anyone really coming up publicly and saying, “I’m adamantly opposed.” What I hear is a lot of people saying, “Hey, I want to give a fair hearing. I want people to be able to answer questions publicly.” I mean there are issues, let me give you for instance, that people aren’t talking about,” Lankford replied, adding:
Tulsi Gabbard with the Office of Director of National Intelligence. For that role, she has voted against what’
s called 702 authority every time that she was in Congress and voted against it. Well, now she’s going to be the spokesman for 702 authority.It’s a legitimate question just to say, okay, how are you going to handle this? What does that mean? Because if she comes out and says, “No, I want to oppose all 702 authority,” that literally shuts down all of our national defense gathering. Now I don’t think that that’s what she’s going to say at all, and I’ve had an opportunity to be able to sit down with her, but she’s going to get a fair hearing to be able to put those things out there and to say, “This is what I believe about these issues.” And I think it’s the right thing to do.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee managed to delay Gabbard’s confirmation hearing as she has yet to return the background check and questionnaire to the committee.
Listen to the full podcast here.