President Joe Biden’s campaign literature promised to achieve “a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions” in a few decades. And while on the trail, he quixotically promised it on numerous occasions.
In an exchange during a 2019 Democrat primary debate, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Biden: “Would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking in a Biden administration?” Biden responded, “No, we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated.” When Bernie Sanders snapped back, “I’m talking about stopping fracking, as soon as we possibly can,” Biden replied, “No more, no new fracking.”
A few months later in New Hampshire, a voter asked Biden: “But like, what about, say, stopping fracking?” He answered: “Yes.”
Yet, when the Trump campaign ran an ad featuring a woman saying, “If Joe Biden’s elected, he’ll end fracking, that would be the end of my job and thousands of others,” outlets like the AP and Washington Post rushed to defend their candidate, and mitigate the damage his position could cause among sentient swing state voters.
On his very first day on the job, Biden used executive power to limit hydraulic fracturing by stopping construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
With the stroke of a pen, he insulted our closest allies, increased the market shares of rogue adversaries, and crushed thousands of good-paying blue collar jobs; this was solely done to appease the insidious Green Lobby.
At the urging of fringe activists, he also established new fracking regulations on public lands — a 60-day freeze on new leases on federal lands, which could become long term — and created the hard left, anti-fracking “Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.” He recently went even further with an outright pause in oil drilling on public lands.
Writing in Forbes this week, San Francisco-based Rachel Sandler defended Biden by claiming, “the president does not even have the power to ban fracking nationally.” So he’s only banning fracking that he’s able to ban? Be serious, Rachel.
As a friend noted to me last night, “that’s like arguing Donald Trump never supported a border wall because he didn’t hold enough power to unilaterally build it.”
Presidential candidates frequently promise policies that are only achievable via legislation. For example, presidents don’t cut taxes themselves; legislatures must write the bills. Should we now consider “tax cuts” the stated position of all Republican candidates?
Biden cannot curtail all fracking with a single decree, and he can’t retroactively ban fracking, but surely he can eliminate future fracking.
One easy way to clear up Biden’s position would be if a reporter could rise from somnolence and ask the president if he would sign a bill including a national fracking ban. Outside of Fox News, don’t hold your breath. So-called “journalists” didn’t ask one pertinent question on the topic last week.
Biden misled or outright lied about his position on the issue, and the sycophantic press — now angling for bizarre positives in the debacle — gleefully enabled it.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
