Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) slammed President Trump in an interview on Sunday, saying he doesn’t consider him to be a “role model for my kids.”
“I don’t want my kids to speak the way that he speaks,” Lankford told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt. “And that has been the challenge for quite a bit of time to say, how do you balance this out between policy and personal behavior, in the way he has his own unique style.
{mosads}
“I don’t speak that way. I don’t tweet that way. I don’t interact with people that way. I don’t treat my staff the same way he treats his staff. But that is who the American people selected and that’s who we’re going to be able to work with.”
Lankford went on to say that none of Trump’s actions since taking office shocked him.
“It was pretty clear during the campaign there were different moral issues, and we have different lifestyle choices that we have made personally,” Lankford added.
Lankford did say that Trump may be a role model in business and deal-making.
Lankford didn’t comment directly on whether evangelicals have overlooked Trump’s personal behavior. But he said he would have made the same comments during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
“An individual’s personal life does matter,” he said. “It shows you evidence of what they’re going to be like.”
Lankford has criticized Trump before. In July 2017, Lankford said Trump’s tweets “don’t help our political or national discourse and do not provide a positive role model for our national dialogue.”
Lankford is not the only Republican lawmaker to criticize Trump in recent days.
During a commencement address at Harvard Law School, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Trump had “debased the presidency with his “bottomless appetite for destruction and degradation.” Flake has been a vocal critic of the president.