South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Wednesday suggested that President Joe Biden intentionally brought on the crisis in eastern Europe through his decisions relating to oil and drilling.
Noem spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night as reports came in that Russian President Vladimir Putin had launched a “special military operation” against Ukraine. Hannity began by essentially claiming that Biden screwed everything up when it came to energy logistics despite the fact that his predecessor put him in a great position.
“Joe Biden inherited energy independence and he inherited America as a net exporter of energy,” Hannity said, then shifting to Biden’s decisions while in office, which he claims “made Putin rich again.” The Fox News host cited Biden canceling the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in North Dakota, as well his apparent reluctance to embrace drilling.
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These decisions have been “very much a factor” in the recent rise in gas prices, Noem said. Biden “was not prioritizing American businesses and families. This is what you get when you are a weak president,” she claimed.
Hannity then repeated the things that Biden did which he didn’t like, and at the end asked Noem, “How does that make any sense from a geo-political standpoint?”
The governor replied: “It feels planned to me, Sean. There is just no way he could possibly get all of those wrong and not know what it was going to do and how it was going to put us where we sit today with Putin.”
Noem’s comment seemed to be the natural progression of an earlier right-wing narrative that the threat of a Russian attack against Ukraine was a “ruse” to benefit Biden politically by being a distraction from Hillary Clinton, among other things.
Now that an attack is underway, Noem’s theory seemed to go, Biden had a hand in purposely bringing it about because his administration doesn’t want to open up wildlife refuges to drilling, thinks oil firms should pay more to drill on public land, and last year rejected the permit for a frequently leaky pipeline carrying dirty oil. Got it.
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