One long string of ‘quid-pro-quos’ that have led to international wars and terrorism.
Five years after Trump was impeached over accusations that he pressured Ukraine for political reasons, Biden is pressuring Ukraine for political reasons with no impeachment in sight.
Recent reports in the UK’s Telegraph and Financial Times suggest that Biden is demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure because he’s afraid of the impact of high energy prices on the presidential election.
“Mr Biden reportedly raised concerns with Kyiv that the bid to damage Russia’s oil production capacity could have repercussions for his re-election campaign,” The Telegraph reported.
“Nothing terrifies a sitting American president more than a surge in pump prices during an election year,” The Financial Times quoted a former White House energy adviser as saying.
Similar reports have started to appear in other European media outlets including Politico.
Whatever one thinks of the Russia-Ukraine War, Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are an illegitimate and impeachable reason to be conducting a war or any foreign policy.
And this is not a unique event.
Many suspect that Biden’s turn against Israel was driven by a threat to his election prospects from Hamas supporting voters in Dearborn, Michigan, as well as radical leftists in his party.
And this is part of a pattern that has weakened America.
Biden emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) ahead of the midterms to buy support for his party in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine war and ahead of what would become the Hamas war. Those actions left America vulnerable and potentially changed the course of both wars.
The decision to empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was not done for national reasons, but personal political ones, and while politicians routinely bribe voters with public money, this particular bribe could end up losing several wars while sending America into an energy crisis.
Biden’s obsession with the impact of oil prices on his time in office led him to provide sanctions relief to Iran even while suppressing domestic energy production. By propping up energy production in enemy nations like Iran and Russia, Biden was able to give his leftist environmentalist base what it wanted, crushing domestic energy production, while ensuring what he thought would be a cheap supply abroad that he could always rely on for elections.
But the Saudis responded to Biden’s sellout on Iran by goosing energy prices, and Russia and Iran took the influx of cash and used it to launch their own wars with disastrous results.
Biden’s support for Ukraine was premised on protecting the flow of Russian oil and gas. Russians and Ukrainians could die in large numbers on both sides, but energy prices couldn’t spiral too far out of control because that might actually affect Biden’s reelection campaign. But as Ukraine struggled on the battlefield, Russia’s energy infrastructure became an easy and obvious target, and Biden’s obvious political agenda became more easily apparent.
Now the European press is talking about it even if it’s still too explosive for the American media.
Democrats widely support both the Ukraine war and ending oil production which when taken together lead to high energy prices. Unable to find a way to combine low domestic production, low energy prices and the Russia-Ukraine war, Biden turned to an easier target: Israel.
Unlike Ukraine, Israel is less popular with Biden’s base. And the Biden administration may be hoping that forcing an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas will also convince Iran to step down its regional attacks, including by the Houthis in Yemen, and simplify the process of talking the Iranians and even the Saudis into a nuclear deal that will lower energy prices.
Biden has already been negotiating to trade the Saudis nuclear capability for cheap oil.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that “Saudi Arabia has told the White House it would be willing to boost oil production early next year if crude prices are high”.
This was not just a Saudi proposal, but an explicit request from the Biden administration.
“Two top White House officials, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, flew late last month to Saudi Arabia, where they emphasized that soaring petroleum prices would make it harder to win support in Washington, the officials said,” the Journal reported.
Biden had previously demanded that the Saudis postpone a production cut ahead of the midterms. The Wall Street Journal had reported that, “the one-month delay requested by Washington would have meant a production cut made in the days before the election, too late to have much effect on consumers’ wallets ahead of the vote.”
And Biden had even tried to bribe the Saudis with a fortune in taxpayer money, promising to “buy oil on the market to replenish Washington’s strategic stockpiles if the price of Brent, the main international benchmark, fell to $75 a barrel”.
“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done,” Biden had threatened Saudi Arabia on CNN for failing to go along with his demand for election day oil price rigging.
Biden’s foreign policy of bribing enemies is unnecessary because he has a simple and straightforward way to lower oil prices: restart domestic production.
Instead, Biden broke the law and illegally tried to block domestic energy production. When that failed, his administration deliberately sabotaged oil and gas lease auctions. After putting a former eco-terrorist in charge of the Bureau of Land Management, he tried to restrict offshore drilling to only three sites and his administration was then sued by the energy industry for using “every tool at its disposal” to stop drilling.
How do we square Biden’s militant campaign against domestic drilling with his obsession with low energy prices abroad? There’s no environmental argument for such an incoherent policy.
Biden isn’t acting out of any consistent set of political principles, but personal election needs.
“I can guarantee you if I am president, there will be no offshore drilling,” Biden promised during his presidential campaign. His leftist backers demand an end to domestic energy production.
And yet he also knows that if energy prices are high, American voters will turn on him.
Biden sold out the American energy industry to win over environmentalists and then sold out our national security to get cheap oil. Rather than just a single ‘quid-pro-quo’, Biden’s foreign policy has been one long string of ‘quid-pro-quos’ that have led to international wars and terrorism.
Once Biden had given away our best leverage in the energy market, domestic production, Iran, Russia, the Saudis and other players used that to their advantage to create the crisis we’re in.
This mess is not simply the result of “misguided idealism”, “incompetence” “naivete” or any of the other excuses used to downwardly define this foreign policy deviancy, but the personal political calculations of a corrupt and greedy president who wanted to lie to everyone.
Biden thought that he could trick, appease and use everyone all at the same time. That he could have his energy cake and eat it too. Instead, Americans are stuck with high energy prices, low reserves and two wars that are not likely to end any time soon. All of this happened because the man who wanted to be president lacked the courage to tell his party that they couldn’t have it all.
The Biden presidential campaign was a contradictory mess. It promised Democrats that they could have a version of Obama who would appeal to older white moderate Democrats. It claimed that two incompatible versions of the party could be fused together uniting traditional Democrats and leftist socialists in one man who would combine the best of FDR and JFK.
Biden’s hypocritical corrupt energy policy shows how he tried to make that work and the price that America and the world are paying for it.
Ray Jarman says
Daniel Greenfield described the Biden/Obama foreign/domestic policies perfectly. As the inbred from Minnesota stated, “Follow the Benjis.” Biden is by far the most corrupt president in American history.
somehistory says
There may be an end to some things, but as long as the sleazy psychopath breathes, there is no end to his corruption and working hard to keep his power and control….no matter the cost to others struggling to eat, have a home, and in the lives lost due to his lies and backstabbing.
rick says
Biden is the worse President ever. Is it due to stupidity or political preferences? I think mostly the former but the latter has to come into play. For instance, Biden could assist Israel easily by using the leverage over Egypt the United States has due to its $1.3 Billion in aid by convincing Egypt to allow a million or more Palestinian civilians to cross into Egypt from Rafah and simply sit out the Israel attack on Hamas in Rafah. Two months is not such a strain on Egypt. And I am sure the Egyptian army could make sure no Palestinians “crawled” under any fencing put in place by Egypt so as to prevent them from setting foot on Egyptian land. And not one Palestinian civilian would die as a result of Israel’s war on Hamas.The absolute ban on Palestinians to temporarily sit out the bombing campaign on Hamas showed how much Egyptians hate these Gazan Palestinians who just a few decades ago were Egyptians. Most Arabs do hate them,
Secondly Ukraine and Russia. Biden has it in his power to end that war. Simply ramp up American oil production allowing American exports to drive down the cost of a barrel of oil to half of the $83 dollars it sells for now and you pull the rug out from Russia’s feet. No oil profits = no war on Ukraine. The Chinese are not going to fund Russia’s war on their marker. Help Russia – yes. Pay for the whole war – NO.
But those two solutions interfere with Biden’s policies on Israel and oil.
So let’s blame the right party for both Palestinian civilians deaths and Russia’s continuation of the war on the Ukraine despite how badly it has been conducted by Russia. Israel has to end the existence of Hamas much as the US had to end the existence of Hitler in WW II. Both threats were too great to allow them to continue.
And if it were possible to cause the Ukrainian war to stop ( at best) or at least to ameliorate that war by adjusting the price of oil, especially now with the public showing it is opposed to replacing gas engines with EV’s, why not save lives and possibly even more while stopping Russia in its tracks without shooting one bullet?
If a President does not do what is reasonable and prudent to end the loss of life in conflicts without ordering our military or demanding that Israel stop its attack on Muslim Nazis or allowing oil rich America to adjust the worldwide oil market so as to box Russia into a “we can’t afford it” box, then Biden is not much of a President or a man of Peace or definitely the “Leader of the west and Democracy”.
PRCS says
“Biden is the worse President ever. Is it due to stupidity or political preferences? I think mostly the former but the latter has to come into play.”
A man whose behavior suggests some degree of age related dementia being manipulated by others to do their bidding.
Happens all the time, but this guy is no ordinary Joe.
James Lincoln says
PRCS,
If Biden were just an average, middle-class American with some degree of dementia, he would likely be in – at the very least – an assisted living environment.
OLD GUY says
He is in a Assisted living facility, supported by mega donors and run by the Obama cartel.
James Lincoln says
Point taken, OLD GUY.
somehistory says
Perhaps he’ll soon be moved to a less expensive facility where he can tell lies to the nurses. They can shut him up by taking his temp every few minutes.
Walter Sieruk says
The ancient Greek Philosopher, Plato, did have a good valid point when he had written, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
The wickedness of Joe Biden is clearly seen by his harming America, as in point number one on the above list by making the United States dependent on foreign oil. Likewise at the time making the price of fuel for truck drivers so very expensive that it cost them $1000 to full one tank of fuel for their trucks therefore making their out of business. Biden is disaster to and for America and the American people in many different ways. The way just described is one of those many ways.
Biden’s wrecking the economy of the United States with is socialist economics he keeps attempting to push on the United States and his always striving against the American free enterprise system. As seen in his shutting down the much needs oil pipeline and at the same time causing many American workers in that business to lose their much needed jobs and likewise creating a drastic rise in the price of gas.
The true “measure” of Biden on America regarding fuel costs as well as on many other important subjects, as employment, is nothing less than a horrendous economic catastrophe.
Walter Sieruk says
Joe Biden as a politician of fifty years in government had done nothing for the betterment of the United States. Now starting from January 20, 2021 pseudo “president” Biden has only harmed America.
For Biden even had the gall to say in a speech about his Republican opponents as “being against everything” he should first look into the mirror.
Biden is against American being oil independent.
Biden must be against low gas prices.
Biden must be against low food prices
Biden is against the American free enterprise system.
Biden must be against the American worker because of his socialist economic policies
Biden is definitely against a strong firm secure US/Mexican border.
Biden is against funding and supporting the police force
Biden is against supporting our only one good friend in the Middle East the State of Israel.
Biden is against putting the hostile vicious anti. America “mullah regime” of Iran in its place by giving those in power in that Islamic tyranny everything they demand.
Biden is the negative one.