Source: United States Senator for Florida Marco Rubio
Miami, FL — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Jesse Watters Primetime to discuss the latest on Russia and Ukraine. See below for excerpts and watch the full interview here.
On America’s energy vulnerabilities:
“We have waged a war under the Biden Administration against oil and natural gas in the United States. We stopped producing it, we have cracked down on it, we aren’t going to [acquire] more of it…. [This] has made Russian oil and gas more valuable, given Putin more leverage, and actually left Europe and us, and the rest of the world, more vulnerable.
“One of the most important sanctions we could impose right now [would be for] Joe Biden [to] go on TV and say, ‘I am lifting all these silly Green New Deal restrictions, and we are going to begin to produce oil and gas, so thugs like Vladimir Putin don’t get to hold entire continents hostage.’”
On the possibility of escalation of between the U.S. and Russia:
“As far as cyber is concerned, we are vulnerable. [Putin] is going to try to hit us there. We are probably going to hit him back. Cyber is a very dangerous thing. We have never had a cyber war. There [are] no rules around it. It could rapidly escalate into something very serious….
“But we should help the people of Ukraine fight [Putin]…. They are not asking us to go in and fight…
“Invading is the easy part. Occupying a country of people that don’t want you there and will fight –– and Ukrainians are willing to fight –– that’s more painful.
“We need to learn lessons from this…. We are too dependent on China for [our] supply chain and too dependent on Russia and the rest of the world for our energy. We need to be able to make things in this country [and] produce more of our energy, or we could be held hostage the way [Putin] is going to hold Europe hostage.”