‘That’s Not Leadership’: Sen. Manchin Blasts Biden’s Botched Energy Policy

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin has been a frequent critic of many positions being advanced by his own party.

Now, the West Virginia Democrat is weighing in on the toll that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have on the entire world.

During a recent interview, Manchin asserted that Joe Biden’s counterproductive energy policies have put the United States in a bad position.

Of course, he is not the only public figure to accuse progressives of ditching the concept of energy independence in favor of pursuing a so-called green agenda.

Such criticism is especially noteworthy, however, when it comes from the mouth of a Democrat.

As the Miami Standard explained:

On West Virginia MetroNews’ “Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval” on Thursday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that we should counter Russia by developing all of America’s energy resources, and we’re “caught in a crunch,” where we have to “start asking the rest of the world to produce for you. That’s not who we are. That’s not leadership.” Manchin also argued that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has made it “almost impossible to build any gas pipelines or maintain the infrastructure that we need in order to be energy independent.”

Manchin’s remarks centered on the hot-button issue of energy, but Biden is facing wide-ranging backlash over his response to the recent Russian provocations.

#BidenIsADisgrace and #BidensWar are both trending. No amount of fiction writing from the New York Times about how *conservatives are REALLY who to be mad at*— will change this.

The narrative is lost. One year of Biden has ruined almost every aspect of American livelihood.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) February 25, 2022

Who is really the President? #BidenIsADisgrace

— Matthew Kolken (@mkolken) February 25, 2022

Russia has leveraged an economy half the size of Germany's to end the post-Cold War era and defeat NATO

It did so with aggression, natural gas, & nuclear

America must produce massively more nuclear, natural gas, and oil, or liberal democratic Western civilization is dead

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 24, 2022

Biden won’t sanction Putin today and he won’t even answer why… I guess whatever Putin has on Hunter/The Big Guy is even worse than what we’ve all seen on the laptop from hell.

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 24, 2022

Manchin is not the only Democrat willing to stand up to the White House on this and other important issues.

Last year, Biden received some criticism from within his own party after a different foreign policy disaster.

According to CNN:

Members of his party in Congress nearly all backed Biden when he announced plans to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan in April, but many Democrats have been infuriated by the administration’s slow response to evacuating Afghans who worked alongside the US military and are now at risk. The images of a hasty withdrawal of Americans and the chaos at the Kabul airport are conflicting with the administration’s claims that they were carrying out an orderly withdrawal.

“These past few days have been difficult to process, and not because the Taliban’s progress was surprising,” said Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Air Force veteran. “In fact, the opposite. We sounded the alarm, and our dire warnings fell on deaf ears.”

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has also been a frequent critic of the Biden administration, as evidenced in the following clip from a recent Fox News Channel appearance.

Do you believe Biden’s policies are making America less safe?