Manchin: Putin Will Never Back Down if We Don’t Shut Down Russia’s Energy Revenue

On West Virginia MetroNews’ “Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval” on Monday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) argued that increasing domestic energy production would allow Europe to get away from Russia’s energy and that if we can’t take away Putin’s energy money, he will never back down.

Manchin said, [relevant remarks begin around 5:15] “[H]ere’s the problem that we have: We have an administration that’s — they’re aspirational in basically wanting to switch to…completely going with renewables. I’m for all of the above. But I’m realistic enough to understand the world does not run on renewables. The world’s running on petroleum. The world’s running on fossil. And if you’re going to help the world and offset this, this is over in Europe, okay, and Europe is very dependent upon that because they made that decision, especially Germany tried to wean themselves off of everything. They cut everything off before they had anything to replace it. So, the bottom line is, we’re going to have to be strong in both. And here’s what I tell the environmentalists, we can do both. You don’t have to pick one over the other. But be strong. Be strong in the fossil. We do it cleaner and better and we have innovation and technology that we can even do more cleaner and better.”

He added that boosting American energy production “gives Europe the chance to say, hey, Russia, we don’t need you anymore, even if you walk away today, we’re going to starve you out of this. Because it’s all about the money for Putin. If we can’t shut that down, you’ll never get him to — you’ll never get him out of there.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett