The threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine abroad may exacerbate President Joe Biden’s problems at home as the White House warns of rising prices at the gas pump.
But critics are complaining that Biden is seeking to avoid taking responsibility for record inflation rates as well as soaring gas prices and energy bills.
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Biden’s “anti-American energy agenda” has “sent prices skyrocketing, destroyed U.S. energy independence, and hammered American families,” according to the Republican National Committee.
“That’s why his attempts to blame high gas prices on Ukraine ring hollow,” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott said of Biden. “If gas was over $1 a gallon cheaper, like it was under [former President Donald] Trump, Americans would be much better positioned to weather those increases.”
“Biden promised to keep Putin in check. He failed,” Pigott added. “And his anti-energy agenda has left American consumers to foot the bill.”
The RNC rhetoric has been echoed on Capitol Hill, including by Chad Gilmartin, who represents House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“Did the Ukraine crisis also force kids to keep masking in school, or was that the Biden administration?” Gilmartin tweeted.
Did the Ukraine crisis also force kids to keep masking in school or was that the Biden administration? https://t.co/ePvQz9BGPX
— Chad Gilmartin (@ChadGilmartinCA) February 23, 2022
For Republican strategist John Feehery, a onetime congressional aide, “people don’t care enough about Ukraine to be happy with gas being at $4 a gallon.”
“There isn’t enough trust in government, post-Afghanistan and post-COVID, for the bulk of voters to fall in line behind the Biden administration,” he told the Washington Examiner.
In response, Democratic strategist Tom Cochrane, an Obama administration State Department alumnus, pointed to polling indicating that most of the public cannot locate Ukraine on a map.
“Tying it to things impacting daily life is a smart communications strategy, trying to make it relevant as it dominates the news cycle,” he said.
Biden promoted this week his steps to “protect” businesses and consumers from increasing gas prices, insisting that the “pain” of his “first tranche” of sanctions would be felt by “the Russian economy, not ours.” But he also emphasized that “defending freedom” could have “costs” as Moscow, which provides one-third of Europe’s gas and crude oil, considers retaliatory measures. The matter looms larger after Germany decided against certifying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
“We need to be honest about that,” the president said in the East Room of the White House. “We are closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption. We’re executing a plan in coordination with major oil-producing consumers and producers toward a collective investment to secure stability and global energy supplies.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki amplified Biden’s message hours later. Yet she declined to detail how the president, allies, and partners intend to counter elevated gas prices Wednesday because, she contended, it depended on Putin.
“That is certainly an option on the table,” she said of future Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases.
Biden has addressed the country three times regarding Russia and Ukraine against traditional White House trimmings, underscoring the situation’s importance through the presidential bully pulpit. But Psaki has still been needled on why the average person should be concerned about a conflict unfolding on the other side of the planet.
“Hopefully, the American people who are tuning into this or have been tuning into this will see is that the president of the United States and his entire national security apparatus have been rallying the world and standing up against the efforts of Russia to invade,” she said this week.
“That should matter because that is a fundamental value that we, as a country, stand up for,” she added. “That goes back to World War II. And we have repeatedly, throughout history, been leaders in the world in rallying support for any efforts to seize territory from another country.”
However, Psaki’s last argument clashes with Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal rationale, a deadly project to end a so-called forever war that undermined his experience and reputation for competence and precipitated his approval ratings drop.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Wednesday revealed that only roughly a quarter of respondents believed that the United States should intervene between Russia and Ukraine. Biden’s foreign policy approval rating is net negative 15 percentage points. His overall approval is net negative 11 points.
On Thursday, Psaki was adamant that Biden “has no intention of sending a U.S. military or U.S. troops to fight in Ukraine.”
“I don’t think it was in your poll how people assess what ‘major involvement’ means,” she told an Associated Press reporter.
Russia’s military forces began an attack on Ukraine early Thursday morning local time, just moments after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” stretching across the embattled eastern region of Donbas and beyond.
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In the lead-up to the attack, Russia had amassed as many as 190,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, including north of Ukraine in Belarus, and Ukraine had reported being subject to cyberattacks.
