Psaki Showcases Her Energy Malarkey

BUCK: Jen Psaki. We were talking about what are we willing to do about Ukraine. You’ll notice, on the one hand the Biden administration is telling you that this is about our principles, and we’ll do anything and we’ll go to any lengths. But not if it makes gas more expensive, ’cause that’s gonna hurt Democrats. Now, I’m not arguing, by the way, when I bring this up, in favor of one or the other policy, at least in this statement right now.

I’m just I’m trying to tell you that what they’re telling you doesn’t add up. You can’t be saying, “We’ll do anything to bring this war to an end in Ukraine that’s within our power economically, except high gas prices. That’s gonna be a little too much.” Here’s Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asking Jen Psaki about this. Play 27.

BUCK: This is just… So I’m saying is true, just to be clear, the White House is not doing this, Clay, because they don’t want gas prices to go up. Now, maybe, folks, listening are saying, “Yeah, you know, damn straight I don’t want gas prices to go up.” But the White House can’t then also play the we’ll do anything to stop this war game ’cause clearly that’s not true.

CLAY: Well, and again, we started off the show talking earlier, Marco Rubio said we’re buying 600,000 barrels of oil from Russia every day, and if you look at the price all of barrel of oil, I believe it’s right now over $110. So we are claiming that we are sanctioning Russia while simultaneously uplifting the Russian economy by continuing to buy barrels of oil from Russia.

So if the United States truly wants to do everything in our economic power to sanction Russia, we would buy oil elsewhere. Now, the balancing act there, Buck, as we talked about earlier is, that might mean that everybody has to pay more for oil. Now, maybe not. Maybe the fungible reality is we can buy that extra 10% from Saudi Arabia. You know who they’re talking potentially about buying from? Have you seen this yet? Iran!

So you might be going from buying and giving money to the awful Russian government, and instead of giving the money to the awful Russian government, giving money to the awful Iranian government, which is why energy independence is so important, because most of the countries that we’re giving money to are against American values, and that’s why energy independence in this country is so important, ’cause we keep the money here as opposed to giving it to our enemies.

BUCK: (impression) “Yeah, well, like Jen Psaki totally disagrees with you ’cause, like, there’s no way, like, Keystone and all the other pipeline things would, like, do anything.” Here she is, clip 26, talking about how, “No, no, no, we’re not gonna take the proper lesson about energy independence.” Here. Play it.

PSAKI: The Keystone pipeline has never been operational. It would take years for that to have any impact. I know a number of members of Congress have suggested that, but that is a proposed solution that has no relationship or would have no impact on what the problem is we all agree is an issue.

BUCK: Okay. So what about drilling on…? We actually heard Nancy Pelosi a moment ago saying she opposes drilling on “public land.” Federal land is what she means by that. What about their entire economic energy policy and program, which is to make it harder and more expensive to produce fossil fuel in this country? When people bring up Keystone…

The Keystone XL pipeline, X-ing that out — which is what Biden did day one when he took the presidency — shows you they’re hostile toward this. They’re hostile toward fossil fuel, domestic fossil fuel production across the country, and they need to be made to deal with that reality. This, “Oh, we’ll reduce our overall energy consumption.” That, folks, is their way of saying, “We take private jets to our climate change conferences. You ride the bus or a bicycle.”

CLAY: There are consequences to the choices you make, and the choice that you make when you decide to embrace the Green New Deal is instead of producing all of our energy in the United States, we’re gonna produce some of it here and then we’re gonna give money to Russia or we’re gonna give money to Iran or we’re gonna give money to Saudi Arabia.

Those countries, by and large… Saudi Arabia’s the best of those three, but they do not embrace American democratic values. So you are undercutting the legitimacy of the American entire system of governance based on climate change malarkey, in my opinion.

BUCK: Good usage of “malarkey.”

CLAY: There you go. I’m impressed by that too.

BUCK: We shouldn’t just cede that one to Biden.

CLAY: Yes. (laughs)

BUCK: That’s a good word. I like that word.