at a press conference in Florida<\/a>, the president-elect suggested that he\u2019d even be willing to use military force to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe need them for economic security,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cQuite frankly, the president\u2019s been very clear,\u201d Lankford said Sunday. \u201cHe is the president that kept American troops out of war. He is not looking to be able to go start a war, to go expand American troops, but he does want to be able to protect America\u2019s national security, and part of that is our economic security and our future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Presidents have conducted broad counterterrorism operations under the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force that were passed more than 20 years ago in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The authorizations have largely been used to justify the use of military force against those who aided the 2001 attack and \u201cthe continuing threat posed by Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s allies have cited national security risks posed by Russia to justify procuring Greenland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News last week that Trump\u2019s interest in Greenland is about \u201cthe Arctic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have Russia that is trying to become king of the Arctic with 60-plus icebreakers, some of them nuclear-powered,\u201d Waltz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During an interview on \u201cFox News Sunday,\u201d Vice President-elect JD Vance said America does not need to use military force to secure Greenland but that the U.S. needs to make sure that Greenland is \u201cproperly cared for from an American security perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrankly, the current leadership, the Danish government, has not done a good enough job of securing Greenland,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think there actually is a real opportunity here for us to take leadership, to protect America\u2019s security, to ensure that those incredible natural resources are developed,\u201d Vance said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what Donald Trump is good at. He\u2019s good at making deals, and I think there\u2019s a deal to be made in Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d Lankford also said for the first time that he planned to vote in favor of Trump\u2019s pick for director of national intelligence, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked if he was a yes on Gabbard, Lankford told moderator Kristen Welker, \u201cI am,\u201d suggesting he was convinced by Gabbard\u2019s newfound support for Section 702, an intelligence gathering tool that she consistently opposed while in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat was a very important piece for me. Obviously, she voted against 702 authority. … But when she came out and said, \u2018Hey, this is something I\u2019m going to stand for,\u2019 that\u2019s part of the role of the Office of National Intelligence, is to make sure we\u2019re actually watching for people to come attack us and stopping them before they do,\u201d Lankford said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., on Sunday dismissed President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s threat to acquire Greenland by military force, saying, \u201cThe United States is not going to invade another country. That\u2019s not who we are.\u201d Trump \u201cspeaks very boldly on a lot of things,\u201d Lankford said, adding: \u201cWe\u2019ve seen this over how he\u2019s done negotiations, whether it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":37141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2446,31985,2347],"class_list":["post-37140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-james","tag-lankford","tag-sen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37142,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37140\/revisions\/37142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}