Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) weighed in on the conflict in Ukraine as Russia invades, asserting that President Biden is failing to hit Vladimir Putin where it hurts: The gas pump.
“You see what’s going on around the world. My view on the whole situation with Ukraine and Russia is, if you want to hit Vladimir Putin, hit him where it counts,” DeSantis said during a Monday press conference.
“This is a guy who’s basically an authoritarian gas station attendant, ok, with some legacy nuclear weapons from the old Soviet Union. Their whole society is hollowed out except for that energy. And so if you want to hit them, hit them at the gas pump. Hit them with energy,” DeSantis said, identifying the key problem as Biden stripping the U.S. of its status as energy independent.
“[Biden] has stepped on the necks of our domestic energy here in the United States. We should have Keystone reactivated in the United States. He should get rid of the ban on producing in federal lands, and he should welcome more domestic energy production. We were before Biden took office, for the first time in any of our lifetimes, actually energy independent. Putin didn’t matter,” DeSantis said, noting that the U.S. is now “importing millions of barrels of oil from Russia.”
“So why would you want to do that? So let’s be real. It’s a matter of national security. Yes of course, it’s a matter of the gas pump. Gas is up 40, 50 percent in the last year. That hurts people,” he continued, adding that lower gas prices are important, as is a secure energy supply, freeing the U.S. from relying on “rogue parts of the world.”
“My feeling is they haven’t done enough —Europe or Biden’s administration — to really hit Putin where it counts, and that’s because they have been so weak on domestic energy. So let’s get back to where we need to get to back to,” he added.
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