President Joe Biden is wrong to blame the nation's rising gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin when Biden and his policies against the Keystone XL pipeline and other issues have moved the United States away from its position of energy independence, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., told Newsmax on Tuesday.
"He's absolutely wrong," Fleischmann said on "National Report." "Certainly, Putin's contributed to this, but let me be unequivocally clear: From day one the Biden administration and specifically Joe Biden have taken this country in the wrong direction on several fronts."
The U.S. had reached energy independence under former President Donald Trump and had net exports of oil and natural gas, but Biden's actions have interrupted that, Fleischmann said.
"It's outrageous," Fleischmann said. "It's wrong. It's left us in a position where we are vulnerable. If you leave someone in a position, and Biden did that, we have a crisis and now that vulnerability is exposed. It's inexcusable."
Biden needs to reverse course and meet with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and his Cabinet, as well as the American people and ramp up oil production, Fleischmann added.
"We've got it in this country," he said. "It's abundant. We need to reap it, harvest it, sell it to the world, and get our oil prices down."
But that isn't being done, Fleischmann added, because Biden is too tied with the "radical left-wing" Democrats.
"I thought he was going to be more of a centrist president," Fleischmann said. "I was wrong. Obviously, I didn't support Biden. I'm a Trump supporter. I'm a Republican, but I thought when I listened to his inauguration speech I remember vividly him saying he was going to govern from the center. He is not."
The left, he added, has hurt the United States' economy and foreign policy, including in Afghanistan.
"He's got to recalibrate because they are going to get clobbered in the midterm elections," Fleischmann said. "Not because of conservative Republicans like me, but because the American people are going to say absolutely no to Joe Biden's domestic and foreign policy. We can feel it at the pumps. We can feel it in the workplace. We see it in the economy. We've got to have a complete reversal."
Fleischmann said he plans to hear Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Congress on Wednesday, as it's important to know what is going on and to present a unified front against Russia and Putin.
"We see that in the House," he said. "We see that in the Senate. We even see that from the Biden White House against what Russia is doing in that country."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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