In a Thursday interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) ripped President Joe Biden’s handling of inflation and Russia.
Cruz pushed back against the White House’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin was causing the high gas prices with his invasion of Ukraine. The Republican Texas senator argued what led to the invasion of Ukraine was Biden’s “appeasement and weakness to Russia.”
“The Putin price hike — as you pointed out — that’s the White House’s latest talking point on inflation. Let’s be clear — gasoline prices had risen 48% before Putin invaded Ukraine,” Cruz asserted. “The reason Putin invaded Ukraine is because Joe Biden made the indefensible decision to waive sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — sanctions that I had authored, sanctions that had stopped that pipeline, that had stopped Putin from invading Ukraine, and Biden instead decided to try appeasement and weakness to Russia. That caused the invasion.”
“But it’s important to understand a huge part of the gasoline price hike has nothing to do with Putin,” he added. “What it has to do with is the relentless war on U.S. oil and gas production domestically. And … to be clear, this is what Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail. On the campaign trail, he told the American people, ‘If you elect me, we’ll stop drilling.'”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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