Psaki Can’t Explain Why Biden’s Not Sanctioning Russian Energy

DESANTIS: This is a guy who’s basically an authoritarian gas station attendant, okay, with some legacy nuclear weapons from the old Soviet Union. They… Their whole society is hollowed out except for that energy, and so if you want to hit them, hit ’em at the gas pump. Hit ’em. Hit ’em with energy.

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. That was the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, taking some shots at Vladimir Putin and bringing up something that is really at the center of this from the U.S. perspective. How much can we do, what should we do in response to invasion of Ukraine? Just as an update right now on what’s going on, the capital of Kiev is increasingly coming under Russian air strike and artillery and muscle strikes.

And so that’s likely to continue. Some are saying there might be a true siege of the capital city as Russian forces continue to move into the country. Keep in mind, it’s only a small portion of the Russian forces that have already been prepositioned for this invasion that have been deployed. Casualties are going up, civilian casualties going up with each passing day. This fighting looks to be getting worse, and it does not seem that there is any imminent negotiation going on.

So now we turn to what is the U.S. and Western response to this going to be, what levels are we willing to take it to? And you had Ron DeSantis there talking about the energy sector and how we have put sanctions — “we” meaning the West generally but America specifically — on Russia, Clay, in order to create economic pressure. And the ruble has fallen and the stock market is tanking over there.

And they’re feeling it, but they’re not feeling it at an economic existential level, like we won’t be able to pay our bills, no milk in the store, no bread on the shelves level. Instead, we have carved out their energy sector and said, “Well, we’re not gonna hit that.” And here is Psaki, White House press secretary, trying to tell everybody, “Well, that’s ’cause it would have big impacts on us here at home if we were to do that.” Play it.

BUCK: Clay, she’s basically… She is actually just saying, “Yeah, we could hit Russia a lot harder economically, but that would hurt us, too, economically. That would cause an increase in gas prices.” I think Democrats realize this is a political vulnerability, which is why, more than anything else — although I’m sure they also don’t want to see higher prices across the board. I think that they realize this is a problem for them going into the State of the Union, going into the midterm election as well.

CLAY: Well, people are gonna start to put two and two together here. This isn’t complicated. You can’t be social justice warrior-ing on Twitter and saying, “Oh, look at what we’re doing. We’re pulling Russian vodka off of our shelves. We’re not gonna buy Russian vodka.” Meanwhile, we are buying millions of barrels of oil and the price of oil literally, as we are speaking right now, has risen to the highest level since 2014, over $100 a barrel.

And this is where the United States not maximizing its energy production, in particular in the oil and gas… For instance, Buck, I saw Senator Marco Rubio point out that we are producing over one million less gallons of oil per day, barrels of oil per day than we were before Joe Biden took office. Why did that happen? Because of this whole Green New Deal energy process that they put in place. So you can’t have it both ways.

You can’t social justice warrior for Ukraine and argue, “Hey, let’s pour out all the Russian vodka” and, meanwhile, be passing money directly to Russia for buying a million barrels of oil from Russia every day, which is what the United States is doing, on average. That means we’re giving Russia over $100 million a day while we’re claiming that we are bringing to bear economic sanctions upon them. You’re fighting a battle with one arm behind your back.

And when that is occurring, sooner or later that dichotomy becomes apparent. If you are going to stand up to Russia, then you’re gonna have to bear the price of increased oil or you’re gonna have to do what I think most people would agree listening to this program: You’re going to have to produce the highest amount of oil that the United States possibly can in an effort to help to make up for what you’re losing from Russia in terms of production.

BUCK: He’s Jen Psaki on this very issue this morning on Fox News talking about how the Keystone XL pipeline would take a long time to address markets. We’ll address this in a second. Listen.

BUCK: Now, let’s be honest about this. This is purely ideologically and emotionally driven for Democrats, the opposition just to Keystone XL but specifically in that case, ’cause it doesn’t stop the oil from… Canadian shale oil or shale sand, whatever. I forget what the technical term for it is. It’s gonna get pumped either way, right? They’re actually gonna be using that oil regardless so it doesn’t change the emission. It’s just a question of whether the U.S. has a hand in it or not with the pipeline.

But, Clay, they’re hostile to fossil fuel across the board. They’re hostile to exploration, to exploration on federal land. They make it more difficult for the energy sector. They talk about shutting down — they brag about shutting down — aspects of the energy sector. So, yeah, it would affect things maybe in a few hours, but the point is they’re on the wrong side of the issue because we still live in a world that runs on fossil fuel, and they need to stop acting like idiot children who can’t see that.

CLAY: Well, and everybody is going to slowly realize this, that you can’t have sanctions or an embargo against Russian goods and carve out a massive exception that allows the Russian economy to continue to flourish in many ways, right? So this is the essence of what is going on (laughs) and it’s fundamentally, directly contradictory. You can’t sanction a country and argue that you’re going to bring them to their knees economically while you are simultaneously sending them $100 million a day in oil money.

It doesn’t add up. Either you have to provide real sanctions without this massive loophole or, or you have to figure out — maybe both. But certainly, you have to figure out a way to make up for the oil that right now we are sending money to Russia for and produce that oil and gas ourselves. Energy independence not only for the United States but also being able to sell that to all the other countries that are otherwise purchasing oil themselves. That’s the essence of the issue, and that’s what more and more Americans I think are gonna see as this process plays itself out.