We’re in the middle of crushing inflation with rising gas prices, skyrocketing higher because of the instability with the war by Russia on Ukraine.

In response on Tuesday, Joe Biden gave a speech about cutting off Russian oil that was full of lies. Cutting off Russian oil only makes sense if you are increasing our production or at least have a source from someone who doesn’t want to kill us. We can be more energy independent — and we were under President Donald Trump. Now we see how vital that independence is. We never should have increased the reliance on Russia, to begin with — which happened under Biden. But if you cut it off and then go buy from Iran, who wishes us dead, or prop up the government of Venezuela, what kind of sense does that make? As we noted on Monday, the Biden team is indeed considering getting oil from places like Venezuela and Iran — just not doing anything at all to increase our production.

Biden claimed during his remarks, “It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.”

BIDEN: "It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production." pic.twitter.com/mLHvXNUiM0

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2022

Is he joking? This is a shameful lie that goes against all reality. All during his campaign, he threatened U.S. energy, like this moment where he promised he was going to end fossil fuels.

Biden in 2019: “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuel.”

The pain at the pump is the point.pic.twitter.com/p3oA65vWJD

— Tommy Pigott (@TommyPigott) March 8, 2022

On his first day in office, Biden stopped the Keystone XL pipeline, throwing people out of work and banning any new leases to drill on public lands, showing that stopping more American production was his priority. He further stopped the Willow Project in Alaska. Even two weeks ago, he was halting oil and gas leases.

Two weeks ago https://t.co/1s40Jm8cap pic.twitter.com/xXVVHUFxEa

— Kyle Martinsen (@KyleMartinsen_) March 8, 2022

As we reported earlier, we were producing about one million and a half fewer barrels of oil a day in 2021 under Biden than in 2019 under Trump.

Biden and his team have a new line that they’ve been using to suggest that it’s not them who are cutting back on energy — that companies have 9,000 federal drilling leases so somehow it’s the companies’ fault. This is unhinged, like his claim that cars are more expensive and that’s 1/3 of the reason for inflation.

Mike Sommers of the American Petroleum Institute said Biden’s claim about the leases is deceptive.

“There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the administration as to how the process actually works,” Sommers said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.

“Just because you have a lease doesn’t mean there’s actually oil and gas in that lease, and there has to be a lot of development that occurs between the leasing and then ultimately permitting for that acreage to be productive,” he said. “I think that they’re purposefully misusing the facts here to advantage their position.”

Sommers said the Biden administration should support policies that promote U.S. oil and gas production over OPEC+, which includes Russian oil.

In 2020, there were almost 40,000 subleases to oil companies & it has been cut down last year to less than 9,000 leases. Also, not all those "9000 permits" are active or that oil companies can go right ahead & start drilling due to the regulations making it difficult to start https://t.co/qCn0GxP85N

— Mona Salama (@MonaSalama_) March 8, 2022

“But there will be cost as well here in the U.S.,” Biden said. No kidding.

If you just cut buying Russian oil without increasing our production, you drive up the market price and you make everything here more expensive. He isn’t even talking with American energy producers while trying to use them as scapegoats. If he truly thought they could be producing oil, wouldn’t his first thought be to talk with them rather than Iran?

Had he not taken the anti-energy position he had and increased the buying of Russian oil, we wouldn’t be in this position now. But even now, he still refuses to do what needs to be done for our independence because he’s so owned by the left and their anti-energy aims that are now endangering national security. This is going to be incredibly harmful and hurt so many Americans.