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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio agrees with President Joe Biden’s ban on Russian oil and gas imports.
“I’m happy that the president has announced a ban on Russian oil imports. We import about 200,000 barrels of Russian oil a day,” he said. “We can easily replace that by just producing 200,000 barrels a day more of our own oil. We can easily do that, very quickly.”
The White House had been reluctant to do so because it would force already spiking gas prices to skyrocket.
“This notion that somehow banning Russian oil would raise prices on American consumers is an admission that this guy, that this killer, that this butcher, Vladimir Putin, has leverage over us,” Rubio said.
However, Rubio is not a fan of senior American officials visiting Venezuela to meet with the government of Nicolas Maduro, whose authoritarian rule of the oil-producing country has meant no formal diplomatic relations between the two countries since 2019.
News of the trip, which was first reported by The New York Times, prompted Rubio, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees and a vocal critic of the Maduro regime, to criticize the trip.
“Joe Biden using #Russia as an excuse to do the deal they always wanted to do anyway with the #MaduroRegime,” Rubio tweeted. “Rather than produce more American oil he wants to replace the oil we buy from one murderous dictator with oil from another murderous dictator.”
And Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who is the head of the Senate GOP campaign committee, said, “We should stop importing Russian oil, period. And we shouldn’t be going to Venezuela. … When are we going to learn that we can’t be relying on these thugs?”
Rank-and-file Republicans had equally harsh words for Biden. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart said he was “speechless” and hoped the reports weren’t true.
“I don’t think anybody could be this much of an imbecile. And I say that painfully because it’s too reckless, too stupid, too idiotic, too dangerous for it to be true,” Diaz-Balart said. “This will do nothing, by the way. Venezuelan oil? They’re barely producing right now.”