A week after calling Biden a coward for not sanctioning Russian energy, Ben Shapiro criticizes the president for doing just that

Written by Jason Campbell

Published

On March 8, President Joseph Biden announced a ban on all U.S. importation of Russian oil and natural gas. Prior to the announcement, both Republican and Democratic members of Congress had called on Biden to impose this sanction. Ben Shapiro also called for this sanction, before criticizing Biden for enacting it.

During the March 3 edition of The Daily Wire’s The Ben Shapiro Show, Shapiro criticized Biden for not sanctioning Russian oil and natural gas. He called Biden a “coward” for not sanctioning Russian energy, and said higher gas prices would be a consequence of leadership that Biden feared inflicting on the American people.

From the March 3, 2022, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show, streamed on YouTube

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): This administration continues to be very, very unserious about Russia with regard to ancillary issues. So if you're seeking to dissuade Russia from doing what it is doing, you do need to cut off relations with them. You do need to stop attempting to work with them on issues supposedly important to them. And you actually do need to call on the American people to make a sacrifice. Now, Joe Biden said in the State of the Union that you will have to make a sacrifice, then he wouldn't actually detail what the sacrifice was. Because here's the problem for Joe Biden, in the sense that weakness breeds submission — and so Joe Biden's weakness brought about this conflict — the pullout from Afghanistan emboldened Putin, several months of us saying that NATO alliances were split and that a minor incursion might not merit any sort of response — that all of that encouraged Putin's invasion. That means that he has now brought this about.  And so now he's trying to split the baby. Because instead of saying, listen, we need to bring the harshest sanctions we possibly can. That might mean higher prices at the pump. And we are also going to have to tell the left — we're going to have to tell people on the progressive left, that we are going to have to put our environmental policies on hold because we need to compete with Russia, we need to compete with China, and we need to be energy independent, that is a national security issue. Instead of Joe Biden saying that to his left, and instead of saying to everybody else, and that means, that temporarily, your gas prices are going to go up — but this is what it means to be the leader of the free world. Instead of Joe Biden saying any of that, they just refuse to say any of that. 

So Jen Psaki said yesterday, that we are thinking about energy sanctions but we're still importing 600,000 barrels of Russian oil every day, because, after all, we have to minimize the price impact on Americans — so he's a coward. Because if you're going to be a leader, that means you sometimes have to say things you know will be unpopular to the American people. Joe Biden isn't willing to do that.

Less than a week late on March 9, Shapiro accused Biden of sanctioning Russian energy imports purely as political gamesmanship. Shapiro said Biden enacted the sanctions “as an excuse so then he can blame Putin and Russia for gas prices.”

From the March 9, 2022, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): He should've done this a couple weeks ago when he first rolled out the sanctions. But if he's going to do this now, then it seems as though he is doing this as an excuse. Honestly, it seems as though he's doing this as an excuse so then he can blame Putin and Russia for gas prices that were already rising on his watch. Now, this is — it's the right move to cut off Russian natural gas and oil if actually you're hoping that sanctions are going to effectuate policy change — I'm skeptical that's actually going to happen, but you do want to undermine the Russian war-making machine, I get it. However, you are the President of the United States and you don't get to just say — wash your hands clean of this thing, and be like, yeah you know it's all Putin. But that's exactly what Joe Biden is doing now. Now he's going to abdicate responsibility on an issue where again, he was talking back in October, November about how gas prices were way too high for most Americans. And so we're just going to pretend that didn't exist. We're going to pretend that the world of high gas prices starting spinning yesterday. Nope.