Sen. Tom Cotton: Biden Shouldn’t Have Called Saudi Arabia ‘a Pariah’
(CNSNews.com) – President Joe Biden never should have called Saudi Arabia “a pariah state” during the presidential campaign, because they’ve been an important partner to the U.S. in the Middle East, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Tuesday.
As CNSNews.com reported, the White House announced on Tuesday that the president plans to visit the Middle East to “reinforce the United States’ iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security and prosperity and attend a Summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan (known as the GCC+3).”
The announcement came after repeated questions about when and if the president would visit Saudi Arabia and meet with the crown prince in an attempt to lower gas prices.
“John, first off he should not have called Saudi Arabia a pariah state to begin with in the campaign,” Cotton told Fox News’ “America Reports” on Tuesday.
“We’ve had differences with the kingdom over the decades, but they’ve been an important partner of the United States in the Middle East and to promote energy security across the country, but even more importantly, he should have never gotten America in the position where we had to go to any nation for energy security, whether it’s Saudi Arabia or Norway or even for goodness sakes, Venezuela, where he’s also gone hat-in-hand begging,” he said.
“We have it in our power here to secure our energy future, but the Biden administration and the Green New Deal Democrats have been strangling American energy for the last year and a half,” the senator said.
Cotton said that the White House acts as if there’s something wrong with the president going to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to get OPEC to lower oil prices.
“They act as if there is something wrong with that, whether it’s Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates or Canada or Norway or any other country that’s a partner or ally of the United States that produces oil, which brings down the price of oil globally if we have more. This is devastating families’ budgets in Arkansas, paying almost $5 a gallon,” the senator said.
“Out west, some states are approaching $10 a gallon. You have families that are having trouble making ends meet because the price of gas is so high. The world supply of oil is pretty essential to America’s security and prosperity. They tie themselves in knots though President Biden had to flip-flop on what he said on the campaign trail,” he said.
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