Last Updated on January 15, 2021
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) penned a verbose, sniveling, and long-winded apology letter Thursday in which he claimed the challenge to the electoral college vote on Jan. 6 was racist and disenfranchised “the validity of votes coming out of predominantly Black communities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit.”
Lankford opened the letter, which repeatedly capitalizes the word Black in accordance with critical race theory dogma, by randomly invoking a date of “less than 140 days until the 100th anniversary of the worst race massacre in our nation’s history.”
The Republican senator went on to extol the virtues of black-owned businesses, and the prominence of black people on the Tulsa City Council, Police Department, and State Legislature, and “many boards and commissions.”
“When I announced my support for an Electoral Commission to spend 10 days auditing the results of the Presidential Election, it was never my intention to disenfranchise any voter or state,” Lankford wrote.
“What I did not realize was all of the national conversation about states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, was seen as casting doubt on the validity of votes coming out of predominantly Black communities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit,” the letter continued.
Lankford then made the bizarre claim that “After decades of fighting for voting rights, many Black friends in Oklahoma saw this as a direct attack on their right to vote, for their vote to matter, and even a belief that their votes made an election in our country illegitimate.”
“In this instance, I should have recognized how what I said and what I did could be interpreted by many of you,” Lankford concluded. “I deeply regret my blindness to that perception, and for that I am sorry.”
Lankford has a record of vigorously opposing President Donald Trump, and reportedly joined Senate Republicans’ largely symbolic challenge to the electoral college solely to ward off the threat of a 2022 primary challenge.
Following the November election, Lankford threatened to “step in” and help Joe Biden receive intel briefings if President Trump refused to give them to the Democrat candidate.
