On Sunday, Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and James Lankford (R-OK) appeared together on CBS’ “Face the Nation” with host Margaret Brennan to discuss the Senate’s weekly prayer group, which meets every Wednesday morning.
During the discussion, Brennan asked Sen. Lankford about President Trump’s behavior as it relates to his own faith, and his answers were salient.
BRENNAN: We’re on the verge of this impeachment trial, and during the Clinton impeachment, we often heard from Republicans the criticism and the call for an American president to be a moral leader, and we heard about moral failings. These days, you will quietly hear criticism of the president from Republicans, but you don’t hear that loud criticism in the way we did 20 years ago. What has changed?
Lankford first noted that he isn’t sure “anything has changed” in that there is always “ongoing conversation about policy and about responsible leadership and about role models.”
He added that he doesn’t see the president as a “role model” for young people due to some of his personal behavior:
I said very early on in the campaign time period when people asked me in 2016, “What are you looking for?” I said “Well, I always look for a president who can be a role model.” I don’t think that President Trump, as a person, is a role model for a lot of different youth. That’s just me personally. I don’t like the way that he tweets, some of the things that he says, his word choices at times are not my word choices. He comes across with more New York City swagger than I do from the Midwest, and definitely not the way that I’m raising my kids.
Lankford said that while there is certainly policy on which he and the president agree, “it’s also been a grand challenge to be able to say, for a person of faith, for a person who believes that there is a right way to go on things, I wish that he … was more of a role model in those areas.”
Despite Lankford’s reservations about President Trump on a personal level, the senator noted that policy-wise, the Trump administration has been great for people of faith:
Now, saying all that, on the area of life, where I’m very passionate about, on the issues of abortion, for instance, he’s been tenaciously pro-life. He’s focused on putting people around him that are very focused on religious liberty – not honoring a particular faith, but honoring any person of any faith to go be able to live and practice that faith and to have respect for that. That’s helpful for any person of faith, to be able to say, “Give me the space to be able to live my faith,” and to be able to put people into the administration that will also allow that and encourage that.
Lankford also addressed the “conundrum” of his position:
So, for people of faith, it’s a bit of a conundrum at times, that I look at some of the moral decisions that he’s made and go, “I disagree with that.” But he’s also been very, very protective of areas like life, and very protective of areas of religious liberty to be able to allow people to be able to live their faith out. And at the end of the day, what we’re really looking for in an administration is folks that allow us to be able to live our principles.
Brennan asked Lankford if it’s difficult to be an elected Republican of faith under a Trump administration, and the senator replied that it isn’t because, in essence, the president isn’t his responsibility.
It is not hard for me to be able to live that out because my first responsibility is for myself and for my family – that we’re going to live that out.
“But then you get asked by people like me, how could you support this? How could you support that?” Brennan asked.
Lankford replied:
It is the most interesting question that I get. Almost every day when I walk through anywhere in the Capitol, someone from the press will say, “The president just tweeted out this. What do you think about it?” And put a microphone in my face and say, “Answer for any kind of moral statement” or “He just said a curse word in a public setting. I know you’re a person of faith. Go answer for this.” Again, the president has a spokesperson, and I’m not the president’s spokesperson. I have a responsibility for myself and my team and for what my family’s going to do, and then I’m also going to try to set what I believe is the right role model. Everyone has a task here.
And one of the interesting things about Washington, D.C., is I don’t get to pick the people that I work with. The American people pick the people that I work with, and then my responsibility is to be able to get things done in that environment that I think drive home a set of values and a set of policies that help the nation long-term.