WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today joined Kudlow on Fox Business to discuss President Joe Biden’s anti-American energy policies, which are fueling Vladimir Putin’s war machine, and the need to formulate an Indo-Pacific strategy to counter Communist China.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on Biden’s war on American energy fueling Putin’s war machine: “I think [President] Joe Biden lives in an alternate universe, Larry. In his alternate universe, he can just crush supply on the energy side. He can do that in a way that increases energy prices around the globe. That enriches Vladimir Putin so he can wage war on Ukraine with the profits that he’s making. And at the same time, he’s got some wishful thinking that somehow, we’re going to be able to get the alternative energy sources that we need. We don’t have them yet. And frankly, when you think about where they’re going to come from, he’s going to be going to China to get his batteries, to get his solar panels, to get his windmills. I mean, this is just preposterous, and you’re right: he’s going to drive us straight into recession if he stays with this.”
Hagerty on Biden pursuing green energy goals to the detriment of the American people: “We absolutely are. And it’s going to continue. If you think about Joe Biden killing a million-acre lease in Alaska, killing more leases in the Gulf, and the message that the Biden Administration sends to the capital markets is that we’re going to not support any project with respect to fossil fuel in America. There is a war on fossil fuel and energy here in America. And again, that’s driving up prices around the globe. They seem to be content with that. I think this is what Biden is saying. We’re going to go through this massive transition. The American economy’s going to suffer a tremendous amount of pain. And I guess everybody’s going to be driving electric vehicles that batteries come from China, making us dependent again on yet another country that doesn’t have our best interest at heart.”
Hagerty on partnering with Indo-Pacific allies to counter Communist China: “I think this has happened on multiple occasions, Larry. This is the third time on this particular instance regarding Taiwan that they’ve [the Administration] tried to walk back what he [Biden] said. But I think I would really, you know, subscribe to Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy, and that is to ‘speak softly, but carry a big stick.’ We need to be building our capability in the region. That’s what China will appreciate. We should take advantage of the fact that Japan has now decided to double their defense budget. The Biden Administration, rather than sending us a DOD [Department of Defense] budget that actually defunds the military when you net it out of inflation, we need to be stepping up our posture, stepping up our presence there—more interoperability, more lethality, more joint exercises—we can do that with Japan, with South Korea. That’s what we need to be doing. That’s how we need to be posturing ourselves. There was some good news coming out of the Quad, and that is that the Quad partners all agreed that they’re going to begin to monitor closely China’s illegal fishing activities in their waters. If you can monitor that, you can also monitor China’s military vessels, too. That’s a step in the right direction, but we need to keep building in that direction.”
Hagerty on the need for fiscal responsibility in aiding Ukraine: “Well, I think the Ukrainian people have demonstrated their willingness to fight. I respect that. I heard some good news just recently that they have more Ukrainian people reentering the country than departing right now. I think the spirit of the Ukrainian people are admirable, and they’re fighting back hard. We have supported that. Look, Larry, we sent over a $40 billion sum—that’s more than my entire state’s budget in Tennessee—to support the Ukrainians as they wage this war. And I think the problem that we’ve got right now is we need to define an endpoint. We need to define gates. We need to have our European allies walking shoulder to shoulder with us. We leaped way ahead of them. And frankly, let’s go back to the beginning of this conversation. If we would just stop the domestic war on energy that Joe Biden is waging here in America on our own companies, we’d lower prices of energy overall around the globe. We would defund Putin’s war machine. We should have a comprehensive strategic posture on this and think clearly about what message we send to China because if China thinks that might makes right, and all they have to do is step up and engage and that there’ll be a concession, I think that would be a very bad outcome for Taiwan.”
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