President Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia has drawn criticism from both parties; some say he “bowed” to the country, while others say he shouldn’t have gone at all.
The president reportedly spent the majority of his trip on his knees pleading with Saudi Arabia to increase their oil production rather than using American reserves, according to Senator Rand Paul.
In a Sunday morning interview with WABC 770 AM host John Catsimatidis, the Kentucky Republican said, “Instead of traveling to Saudi Arabia, he should be traveling to Texas or North Dakota, and he should be talking about asking our country to ramp up [oil] supply instead of begging and bowing down to the Saudis and asking them to bump up their supply.”
The comments come following Biden’s tumultuous trip to the Middle East, which included a fist bump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that garnered a lot of attention for a seemingly too friendly interaction with the dictator.
The president has also faced backlash for not being hard enough on MBS for the killing of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Biden claimed that the kingdom was lying when they said he did not bring the issue during his meeting with the crown prince.
Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that by traveling to Saudi Arabia, Vice President Biden’rewarded’ the country for misbehaving.
The progressive Vermont independent responded, “No, I don’t think so,” when Martha Raddatz of ABC This Week questioned whether the president had made the correct choice by going there.
‘You have the leader of that country who is involved in the murder of a Washington Post journalist,’ he noted in his Sunday morning interview. ‘I don’t think that that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the President of the United States.’
At the same time a new Fox News poll released Sunday shows that 55 percent of voters do not approve of Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Saudi relations.
Among registered voters in the poll taken July 10-13, 32 percent said that they approve of the way the president is conducting relations with the Middle Eastern nation.
Raddatz argued to Sanders that Biden had good intentions with his trip, claiming ‘at the heart of the discussions was oil.’
‘Could that make a difference? And doesn’t that explain why he went?’ she questioned.
‘I’m sure that that is why he went,’ Sanders countered, claiming that all Biden has to do is tell oil companies not to profit as highly from their sale of gas and lower prices at the pump.
‘We’ve got [to] tell the oil companies to stop ripping off the American people,’ he said. ‘And if they don’t, we should impose a windfall profits tax on them.
‘So would you just ignore the Saudis if you were president?’ the ABC News host pushed.
‘Look, you’ve got a family that is worth $100 billion which crushes democracy, which treats women as third-class citizens, which murders and imprisons its opponents,’ Sanders said. ‘And if this country believes in anything, we believe in human rights, we believe in democracy. And I just don’t believe that we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that.’
Paul concurred with the progressive lawmaker that Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia to talk oil was a bad idea.
He asserted that the Biden administration alone is responsible for the drastic increase in petrol prices, and that “all the Biden administration has done has been to restrict the supply” while the demand for fuel is still high.
According to the Republican senator, the United States has enough oil to ensure its emergency independence for the next one hundred years.
‘When a government has an all-out attack on the supply of something and it scares investors away… It shouldn’t shock any of us that the price [of oil] has shot through the roof,’ he explained.
‘There is a way to fix this,’ Paul added. They could immediately start encouraging production [in America].’
‘It’s not only bad economics, but it’s embarrassing for him to be over there bowing down to the Saudis and begging them for more oil,’ he said.
‘I couldn’t be more opposed to what he’s doing.’
Biden accused a Saudi official of lying about the topics discussed in his private meeting with the crown prince, while again downplaying his infamous fist bump with MBS.
After returning from a four-day trip to the Middle East early on Sunday, the president spoke briefly with media gathered on the South Lawn.
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, had called a Fox News reporter hour earlier, shortly after Air Force One had departed from Jeddah, and claimed that he “did not hear” Biden address bin Salman about the killing of Khashoggi.
Al-assertion Jubeir’s appears to be in direct opposition to Biden’s account of the Friday meeting with MBS, in which the president said that he had brought up Khashoggi’s murder “at the top of the conversation” and accused the crown prince of orchestrating the crime.
When questioned on the South Lawn if al-Jubeir was speaking the truth about the meeting, Biden answered categorically, “No.”
When questioned by reporters if he regretted his now-famous fist bump with MBS, Biden answered dismissively, saying: “Why don’t you guys speak about something that matters? I would be pleased to respond to a pertinent inquiry.