Biden Bans Russian Oil and Gas

CLAY: Big news that we’ve been arguing for here since certainly last week, maybe even the week before. The Biden administration — under pressure from a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate that was demanding it — has officially decided to sanction Russia as it pertains to oil purchases, meaning that we will no longer purchase Russian oil and gas. What that will do to gas prices remains to be seen.

Whether or not — and we talked about this a lot yesterday — we are able to replace that 600,000 or so barrels of oil that we were buying a day from Russia, in particular with either United States domestic oil production increasing or potentially Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, we don’t know where that money might be coming from exactly. But that was just officially announced.

And effectively that was Biden trying to get ahead to look like he’s making that choice as opposed to Congress forcing him to make that choice. But it took almost two weeks for those sanctions to officially be put into place. And to kind of put it into context for you guys, given the fact that we are giving billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight Russia while simultaneously giving Russia billions of dollars to fight Ukraine, we were effectively funding both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

This will, in theory, create a one-sided side. We’ll be on Ukraine’s side going forward. Now, the challenge will be, how do we make up for the oil and gas that we’re not going to be getting from Russia? How quickly will the rest of Europe follow? Much of Europe, it sounds like, is saying, “Well, we can’t get to this until the end of the year,” and one would hope that this battle between Russia and Ukraine is over far before then.

We have a new all-time high in the cost of a gallon of gas. For all of you out there driving around, I believe it has now hit an average price nationwide of $4.17. If you heard us talking with Trish Regan yesterday, she said possibly the cost of gas could be going to $9 a gallon. So big takeaway here. The question is, what will this do to the price, I would say, of average gallon of gas for the average American out there driving around filling up his or her car all over the country? We don’t know the answer to that officially because we don’t know how much of this gas we’re gonna be able to source elsewhere.

BUCK: You know, they sneered at Trump, Clay, in 2019 when he said that Biden could drive the price of gas up to $7 a gallon. That was just, “Trump is so full of it. He doesn’t know anything!” They all sneered at him. They sneered at Mitt Romney when he said that Russia was a geopolitical threat. I just want to note has a single of the commentariat, the journos, the foreign policy establishment who are all just laughing, wearing their top hats and their monocles drinking their lattes at the think tanks…

They don’t actually wear top hats, but you get what I’m saying. They were laughing at how foolish Mitt Romney was. Do any of them feel chastened by the reality of geopolitics and also by the reality of electing Joe Biden, who part of his pitch, we have to remind ourselves, was, “I’m not gonna shut down the economy. I’m gonna shut down covid.” Remember how many times he repeated this?

CLAY: Oh, yeah. That was his pitch.

BUCK: That was a big line. Turns out, he didn’t shut down covid at all. We reached all-time high covid cases while Biden was president, and now we’ve reached an all-time high in the national average gas price, Clay, and I’m worried that we may reach an all-time high in the U.S. inflation number and that we might start seeing unemployment ticking up and we might start seeing the beginnings of a recession.

And this is where I think everyone has to be very clear-eyed as we look at this because I can tell — and as we’ve said, it’s getting uglier in Ukraine, as it was inevitably going to. More civilian casualties, more awful things happening. People are starting to say, “Would Putin really fire at us if we had a no-fly zone?” He wouldn’t fire nukes at us. Would he even fire at U.S. jets?” You’re hearing this talk more out loud. That’s one thing you have to keep a very close eye on here, and the other is, “Okay, everyone thinks like Stephen Colbert said that, you know, I’ll pay a dollar or so more.” Did you see this, Clay, last night?

CLAY: Yeah, he said he’d pay $15 a gallon if he needed to.

BUCK: Stephen Colbert is worth close to $100 million for everyone listening to this, so it’s not a surprise that he takes that position, Clay. But I want to know, is it worth it if there is a recession that means that millions of Americans can’t pay their bills; that the drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and suicide rate goes up noticeably in this country? Is that worth a clean conscience, as he says? We really have to look at what the possible costs of this will be. This is not “give a penny, take a penny” at the local grocery store.

CLAY: Well, remember Mayor Pete yesterday said that the solution to people who have struggling with high gas prices was to buy an electric vehicle. We should be calling him Mayor Antoinette, because that is very Marie Antoinette of him, that your solution to the tens of millions of people out there, when gas prices go up, that represents a massive default tax increase on the average American family out there.

And when you’re talking about $4.20 a gallon gas and way over that, way over $5 for many people out there, this is money that comes out of the overall ability to take care of your family. This might be money that I don’t have the opportunity now to take your kid to go get a pizza, right? You don’t have the opportunity to go out and eat at a restaurant. You don’t have the opportunity to live the life that you would like to be living if gas prices were normal.

The more you drive — and again, this is significant. Lots of people don’t think about it, but many people live substantial distances from where they might have to work because they can have more affordable housing further outside of the city. So overwhelmingly the cost of gas increases is borne by the people who can least afford to bear them.

So when you have Mayor Pete saying go buy an electric vehicle, or you have Stephen Colbert — patron saint of left-wingers in comedy — saying, “I’ll pay $15 a gallon gas, yeah.” You’re rich! Both of you guys are. You have luxuries that others do not. It is a level of tone deafness that is remarkable for a party that used to define itself by representing the working class.

BUCK: You also see something going on in the background and you step back from all this, Clay, we have government policy right now that is driving down through Treasury spending, right, through federal government spending, driving down the value and the purchasing power of the dollar. That’s what inflation is. That’s what’s actually happening. So they’re making the dollars that people work for and have less. Now, in Russia they call them “oligarchs.”

Here, we have very successful billionaires. But if you’re in that situation — worth $100 million or $50 million — it doesn’t matter to you. But to 99%, maybe 95% of the country, something like 7% inflation matters. But they’re driving down through government policy the value of the dollars that you’re earning in your bank account while simultaneously artificially reducing the supply.

And this is why the Biden administration, because of their climate change religion, doesn’t want there to be more drilling, doesn’t want there to be more fossil fuel production at home. They’re driving down the supply of what is most necessary for a modern economy to function. So through decision-making in D.C., they’re making your dollars’ worth less.

And they’re making less energy supply for everybody, which means that everything is getting more expensive on both ends. And, by the way, you’ve got a supply chain issue. And, by the way, you’ve got market-based issues that are gonna get worse and worse as people realize, “Is it even possible for me to operate my business this way? Is it even possible for me to continue?” And this is because of government policy.

CLAY: Yes. And, Buck, it’s going to get really tense for Joe Biden as we get closer and closer to 2022, because you look at — and I’m putting them in the moderate Democrat camp — Joe Manchin, the senators from Montana, the Democratic senators from New Hampshire, Georgia, Nevada, the people who are going to be in really tight reelection fights, they are going to be desperate to get energy independence. And this is wild to think about.

But all of Joe Biden’s agenda, to the extent that he still has an agenda, I think is gonna boil down to a large extent to the price of gas and to overall inflation. And, Buck, we don’t know how high this is gonna go. I would encourage people… I don’t want there to be a run on gas, but sooner rather than later, the way that gas is moving… We talked about this yesterday. The price of gas went up 40 cents in a week last week.

It was the second highest weekly increase in the history of American gas prices. I can’t imagine that the numbers are going to be coming down in terms of what gas is gonna cost you a week from now based on the decisions that we are making. And I hope we don’t get here. But remember — and you and I were too young. I think you weren’t even born. You missed the Jimmy Carter era.

I was born in the last year of the Jimmy Carter era. But there are a lot of people listening to us right now who remember the oil crisis of Jimmy Carter. And the more and more you look at the Biden administration, I think we owe an apology to Jimmy Carter because Biden is far more incompetent on far more different levels than Jimmy Carter ever was. I mean, I would…

In terms of being able to understand complex issues and make the right choices, I would rather Jimmy Carter in his day, maybe Jimmy Carter today even at his age, be making decisions than Joe Biden. In fact, it’s just an utter disaster where we are right now. And I don’t see it getting any better when it comes to what gas is gonna be costing the average American out there.

BUCK: How could it get better? Think about this. What are they doing that’s gonna make it better? Tell us to use less energy? Go get an electric car? These people are imbeciles.

CLAY: Yeah, the only way it could get better is if we got a resolution in Ukraine sooner rather than later and you had an inflated gas price —

BUCK: I meant better economic policies. Still —

CLAY: There’s nothing the Biden administration is going to be able to do I don’t think that’s going to make the price of gas better. And that’s why I feel for everybody out there, ’cause I think we’re headed toward $5 gas, $6 gas, $7 gas. I think it’s almost an inevitability unless the situation in Russia and Ukraine ends. But I don’t have any sense that things are getting closer to a conclusion here.

If anything, it seems like we’re getting to even more of a dangerous era in this conflict where we talked about this before, Buck, and we probably should talk about it more today. I’m worried that Putin, because things are not going well enough for him, is going to accelerate what he’s willing to do. We’re already seeing that to a certain extent. But the analogy I would use is the guy who loses the fistfight sometimes comes back with a bigger weapon. And everybody out there who’s been in high school and seen this kind of thing happen. Knives, guns. I feel like at some point, the fistfight turns into a knife or gunfight.

BUCK: The Russian Air Force is either incapable of doing complex operations, complex strikes — which is possible — or has been held back in reserve for the next phase. It’s one or the other.