Buck Sexton: Biden's 'hostility' to energy production weakened US position against Russian invasion

ORLANDO, Fla. – Former CIA analyst and syndicated radio host Buck Sexton spoke to Fox News Digital at CPAC about the burgeoning Russia-Ukraine crisis, and how he felt President Biden's domestic and foreign policy played a role in weakening the U.S. position against such an invasion.

Sexton, host of the "Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," said Biden's insistence on curbing American energy production has led to further dependence on the global oil market, in which Russia holds a sizable share. 

A recent Forbes analysis showed Russia accounts for 7% of U.S. oil imports, while Canada is the top provider to the U.S. – significant given Biden's cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline project between Alberta, Canada and Port Arthur, Texas. 

While that Russian figure is not as high as European countries like Germany, American reliance on Russian oil is of particular importance given Biden's reticence to reconsider U.S. speculation and production, Sexton told Fox News Digital.

"The Biden administration is clearly in a very difficult position right now because they've already had in the first year or so one major foreign policy catastrophe on their watch. And now Ukraine is, too," he said.

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"There were a few things that the Biden administration was on the wrong side of the things apparent to everybody now. First would be on the energy side: This is a White House that came in absolutely dead-set against expanding fossil fuel exploration and utilization and the export of that to the world market, which is obviously essential for U.S. energy security, and incredibly helpful for us economically."

"We also see it's a national security issue though as well, as many conservatives have been saying for a long time … So the ending of the Keystone XL pipeline – but also just the general hostility of the administration … has put us in a weaker position vis-a-vis a crisis like what we see right now with Ukraine," he added.

Sexton further remarked that many of the Biden administration's bad decisions have "predictable" outcomes that come to be anyway because Democratic Party ideology pushes them into those particular moves.

"So if you are more hostile to fossil fuel exploration, drilling and export, you're going to get less of that," he said.

"You're going to raise gas prices and going to create national security challenges for us. If you are either in favor of defunding or undermining police or [supporting] progressive prosecutors and what they call criminal justice reform, then you're going have more crime on the streets. All the failures so far of the Biden administration are entirely predictable, and I would argue, in fact, have been predicted by people like me and many others."

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Sexton said the obvious strategic move for Biden to take is to "open the floodgates" on American energy exploration, whether it be reneging on his moratorium on fuel exploration or any other actions that would rapidly increase domestic production to both offset the economic effects of freezing Russia out of the U.S. oil market and to bring down inflation.

"That would also take time, and people point out that won't affect the market, you know, necessarily next week. But also, there's oil futures, there's … expectations built into the pricing of the system. But I think we could have a dramatic impact if they change this ideological block they have around fossil fuels," he said.

"This, for me, factors into the bad decision-making of the Biden administration … The outcome is always predictable, but their ideology pushes them in that direction anyway."

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Fox News' Angelica Stabile and Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.