Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) condemns pushback from right-wing commentators on the Senate border bill.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) on Wednesday condemned pushback from fellow Republicans and right-wing commentators on the Senate’s bipartisan border bill.

“They say it’s the wrong time to solve the problem, or let the presidential election solve this problem,” Lankford, a key negotiator on the deal, said on the Senate floor before a vote to advance the legislation failed.

“In fact, I had a popular commentator four weeks ago that I talked to that told me flat out — before they knew any of the contents of the bill, any of the content, nothing was out at that point — that told me flat out, if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”

The Oklahoma senator went on to say that the commentator has been “faithful to their promise and done everything they can to destroy me.” He also described the challenge of combating misinformation about what policies the border security package actually contains.

“There are other folks that read the Facebook posts and the Twitter posts and saw different facts that they thought might be true, but I have personally told them over and over again, they’re false. And it’s been hard to overcome,” Lankford continued. “For some reason, we still believe everything we read on the internet.”