It "doesn't make any sense" that the Biden administration halted oil-drilling leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico at a time when President Joe Biden is "begging" Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela to help offset shortages in the United States, Rep. Markwayne Mullin told Newsmax on Thursday.
"I can't explain anything that the Biden administration does," the Oklahoma Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "He's blaming Republicans for this and blaming President [Donald] Trump, but what he's not doing is taking responsibility for himself."
Instead, even though Biden knows how important oil and gas are to Oklahoma or other energy states, "he's begging Iran, who's not a friend of ours; he's begging the Saudis who have at their own interests in mind; begging Venezuela who was friends of Russia, to help offset it," said Mullin.
The administration has opted to cancel the potential to drill for oil on more than 1 million acres in Alaska's Cook Inlet, with the Department of the Interior citing a "lack of industry interest in leasing in the area," according to a statement provided to CBS News.
It also stopped the Gulf drilling leases, citing "conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales."
Mullin said that as business owners, he and his wife have never fired employees for making mistakes but only for refusing to admit they made mistakes. And Democrats should be "fired out of Washington, D.C., because they can't admit that they made a mistake."
"What they do is they continue to double down, and it's at the cost of every taxpayer out there because inflation is everywhere," he said.
The administration is refusing the permits, he continued, because they want to push the Green New Deal at the cost of Americans by driving up the price of fossil fuels.
"They have this utopia of zero fossil fuels, which isn't even possible to achieve," Mullin said. "If we just took the amount of energy we use today without taking combustible engines off the market, to cool our houses and to cook with, we would have to have a landmass the size of Texas for windmills and solar just to meet today's demands. It's not even feasible to get accomplished what they're doing."
Mullin on Thursday also discussed polling about whether last week's leak of the draft decision on overturning Roe v. Wade will be the largest issue to voters in November, saying that he does think that abortion is a "personal issue when it comes to saving babies' lives," but inflation will be even more in voters' minds.
"I think to those of us that are on the pro-life side, it is a major issue without question," he said. "We've been killing world leaders and world changers for way too many years now. When it comes to November, I think people are going to be voting with their wallet, when you have inflation that's causing the average American $357 extra dollars per month. That's a lot when you have record pricing going up in every direction. That's a lot when you have baby formula that you can't purchase."
But still, the potential of Roe v. Wade being overruled shouldn't be underestimated when it comes to voters' minds on both sides, said Mullin. "For those of us who are pro-life, this has been a fight of ours that we're going to continue to fight because every baby is worth saving."
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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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