On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is “imminent and it’s very likely” and that sanctions will not be effective because “the Germans are not going to get on board” with any sanctions regime due to President Joe Biden’s energy policy undermining American energy and moving the world onto Russia’s environmentally dirty gas.
Waltz said, “I do think it’s imminent and it’s very likely that Putin is going to invade.”
He later added, “I want Americans to understand that Biden’s failed energy policies are directly leading to instability around the world. When Biden shuts down American pipelines, American drilling, puts regulation on our fracking, and moves us away from energy independence, he’s moving the world towards Russian oil and gas. And then you add on top of that green-lighting the Russian pipeline, which, by the way, moves the dirtiest form of gas in the world. So, the environmental argument doesn’t even weigh in. Every time that price of oil goes up, you see Putin getting richer and getting more aggressive, and the same thing with Iran. They are also getting richer and more aggressive because America, rather than exporting oil, he’s — Biden’s moving the world towards dependency on their oil, and this is how you’re seeing it play out. And for sanctions to be effective, which is the centerpiece of Biden and Blinken’s response, it has to be effective in euros and dollars. And the Germans are not going to get on board as long as they are dependent, and, look, they just had to fire the head of the German Navy yesterday for saying Ukraine will never get Crimea back and that we should be showing Putin more respect. So you’re going to see a weak German response here. Putin knows it. And, again, that’s why he knows he can get away with it.”
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