It’s being reported this morning that Biden will announce today that he’s going to finally ban Russian oil after weeks of refusing to do so.
JUST IN – Biden set to ban imports of Russian oil, LNG, and coal without the participation of European allies as soon as today, Bloomberg reports.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 8, 2022
Breaking News: President Biden is expected to ban the importation of Russian oil into the U.S., a senior official said.https://t.co/SDBmk9rsfh
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 8, 2022
It’s about dang time. So what took him so long?
From new reporting this morning, Congress was about to force Biden’s hand on this and he intervened himself to stop it from happening.
🚨NEW, thread: Biden stalled bipartisan bill to ban Russian oil.
A source close to the process tells me that the House Ways and Means Committee worked all weekend in a bipartisan manner to develop a bill to ban all Russian oil imports…
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
… and also remove PNTR (permanent normalized trade relations) from Russia, meaning that they would lose ‘most favored nation status’ on tariffs – but the President himself intervened to stop it.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
Sunday night, Ways and Means Democrats put out a press release about the bipartisan bill they were putting forward – but it was pulled down 5 minutes later. Reuters reported on it, but the bill was still never introduced all day yesterday….
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
…because this source tells me the White House called Ways & Means Dems and told them NOT to move forward on it.
Ways & Means Dems wanted to push ahead anyway – so at about 6:30 last night, someone from the White House called Pelosi’s office to intervene.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
She was “not moved by their arguments” and her office told the WH staff they would be pushing ahead – so around 9:30 last night President Biden himself called Pelosi and asked her not to do it.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
Pelosi, I’m told, still did want to move ahead. So the White House then targeted Sen Wyden via Schumer, to get him to pull out on the Senate side so it would all fall apart.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
They believe this is because the WH did not want to appear that they had been boxed in by Congress on this issue – but it’s a snapshot of the friction between the WH and House Dems beneath the surface.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
Members from both parties expressed frustration that they spent the whole weekend working in a bipartisan fashion only to get rolled by the WH.
**and as I type this, Reuters reports a WH announcement to ban Russian oil is imminent.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 8, 2022
Congress would have likely had veto proof majorities and that’s why Biden stopped it and is finally doing it himself, moving ahead without Europe. He has no choice! His poll numbers are in the tank and he knows the American people are with Congress on this so he’s acting because of politics, not because he really wants to do it.
Here’s a little response to the new ban:
So Biden is banning Russian oil imports (which he should have done since the beginning if he wanted the sanctions to be serious) but is looking to substitute for those imports oil from…Venezuela, a Russian ally and authoritarian socialist state. Makes sense!
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 8, 2022
.@CNN reports Biden to ban all Russian energy imports today. Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.”
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) March 8, 2022