Lankford Defends Trump's Russia Diesel Deal on Meet the Press as Armstrong Calls It a Gift to Putin

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

WASHINGTON

Sen. James Lankford defended President Donald Trump's decision to waive sweeping Russia sanctions on NBC News' Meet the Press on Sunday, breaking publicly with a group of Republican senators that includes the man who sits in Oklahoma's other Senate seat. It is not often that a state's two senators spend the same weekend arguing opposite sides of the same foreign-policy call on the record. This weekend, Oklahoma managed it before Sunday lunch.

Lankford, a Republican, told host Kristen Welker that he supports the president's executive order waiving many of the sanctions in the Graham Act — the Russia sanctions law Congress passed with bipartisan support and Trump signed only last month — including provisions that would have restricted the sale of Russian diesel on the world market. The measures had been due to take effect in the coming days. "He is choosing the American people first is what he's doing," Lankford said. "If anyone's shocked that this president is focused on American voters first, they should have listened to him in the last several years."

A Fine Balance, With Prices at the Pump Doing the Talking

Lankford framed the waiver as a balancing act: keep pressure on Moscow while giving American drivers and truckers some relief as fuel prices soar during Trump's bombing campaign against Iran. The numbers behind that argument are not subtle. The Daily Caller, citing AAA, reported the national average price of diesel at $6.33, up from a 2025 average of $3.64 — the kind of jump that shows up in grocery prices, shipping costs and, eventually, voting decisions. The waiver follows the diesel arrangement Trump announced on October 9 with Russian President Vladimir Putin, under which Russia would release large volumes of diesel into global markets.

The law being waived is named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Trump ally who died suddenly in July and whose name became synonymous with squeezing Russia's energy buyers. As passed, the Graham Act threatened tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the largest importers of Russian fossil fuels and duties of up to 500 percent on Russian goods themselves. Trump's order, issued Friday, used the law's own waiver authority — he certified to Congress that the pause is in the national interest — and it stays in effect until the administration decides further action is appropriate. Existing sanctions imposed under earlier executive orders remain in place, a point administration officials repeated across the Sunday shows.

Armstrong Signs the Other Letter

Lankford's counterpart took the opposite pen. Sen. Alan Armstrong — the corporate energy executive Gov. Kevin Stitt tapped to fill the seat left vacant when Markwayne Mullin was appointed Homeland Security secretary earlier this year — joined a bipartisan group of senators condemning the decision. Their letter describes allowing Russian diesel onto the world market as a "gift" that lets Putin finance his invasion of Ukraine and support regimes like North Korea and Iran. "For decades, America has stood as the bastion of freedom against tyranny, and American presidents have embodied our nation's resistance to tyrants. Putin is a tyrant," the letter, signed by Armstrong and 11 others, reads. "Maintain our legacy – and the duty America holds – as leader of the free world."

Armstrong was far from alone. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the waiver "beyond irresponsible," Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Graham himself would have been appalled, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the move publicly, warning it weakens pressure on Moscow. A bipartisan group of House members had already written last week urging the administration to enforce the law and abandon the diesel pact. When your own party's senators are quoting your law's namesake against you, the word "bipartisan" is doing real work in both directions.

Lankford: "Any Belief That President Trump Is Aligning With President Putin Is Not True"

Lankford pushed back directly on the charge that the waiver amounts to siding with Moscow. "Any belief that President Trump is aligning with President Putin is not true," he said. "He's trying to get both of them to the table, but he's definitely providing continual support to Ukrainians." Lankford pointed to continued intelligence sharing and weapons systems flowing to Ukraine as evidence that the administration's support has not stopped, even as it opens a door for Russian diesel.

Other administration voices spent Sunday making versions of the same case, not always in the same words. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, appearing on CNN and ABC, called the diesel arrangement an incentive: Russia, whose refining capacity has been battered by Ukrainian drone strikes, can only profit from exports if it reduces the fighting enough to restore production. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Saturday that the diesel "was going to be sold one way or the other" and that Trump will take up to 60 days to weigh the sanctions and tariffs. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, also on Meet the Press, pointed to the sanctions the administration imposed on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil in 2025 and said, "No one has been tougher on Russian sanctions than President Trump." Three officials, three slightly different explanations — relief for consumers, leverage for peace, and a record of toughness — for one signature on one order.

Why the Split Matters Beyond Oklahoma

The public disagreement lands at an awkward moment for the White House. The waiver is already a central exhibit in the broader argument over Trump's standing heading into the November midterms — see our report on Trump's record-low approval polling — and fuel prices are the rare issue that reaches voters who never watch a Sunday show. Lankford is, in effect, betting that the price argument wins that fight: that voters filling up this week will credit the president for choosing them, in his words, first. Armstrong and the letter's other signers are betting the opposite — that easing pressure on Putin, weeks after signing Graham's law, reads as exactly what they called it.

Both senators cannot be right about how this plays, and the next few weeks of diesel prices may settle the argument faster than any floor speech. If prices fall, Lankford's fine balance looks like statecraft. If they do not — and critics note Russian refining damage limits how much diesel Moscow can even ship — the waiver will have traded away the toughest new Russia law in years for relief that never arrived at the pump. Either way, Sunday made one thing plain: this is no longer a debate between the White House and its opponents. It is a debate inside the president's own party, between two senators from the same state, in plain view. Our nightly wrap has the waiver in the full context of the weekend's news, and the news index is tracking what comes next.