'Special Report' All-Star Panel on Biden's energy agenda

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Biden energy policies under scrutiny, shifts blame to Russia for rising gas prices

'Special Report' panel react to the Biden admin's energy agenda.

This is a rush transcript of "Special Report with Bret Baier" on March 9, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, HOST: A lot of talk about oil prices and what's happening with the war in Ukraine. The administration now tagging everything with hashtag "Putin price hike" when talking about the price of gas. Obviously, gas prices were going up before the Ukraine invasion, but let's talk about all of that with our panel, Katie Pavlich, news editor at Townhall.com, Juan Williams is a FOX News analyst, and Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of "The Federalist." Mollie, what do you make of all of this?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, EDITOR IN CHIEF, "THE FEDERALIST": Well, the situation in Ukraine has been not good, and the reaction of the Biden administration has been confusing. Much like what Senator Ben Sasse said earlier in the program. It doesn't seem that they have a coherent strategy. They and NATO have been all over the place on providing aid, and this is a really bad situation brought on in part by that weakness and confusing messaging of the Biden administration.

At the same time, you are hearing people say, like Lindsey Graham said on FOX News last night that now would be a good time to remove Putin. That's also not a realistic approach to handling the situation. We should be having calm and sober minds seeking to end the conflict, an end to this war in Ukraine caused by Putin, not expand it to other countries, and not make it so that the burden of what Putin has done is born by the American middle class, crushing them with some of these unwise energy decisions that have come out of the Biden administration.

BAIER: Let's talk about energy, Katie, and this hashtag "Putin price hike." They keep on saying that, they keep on referring to the 9,000 leases, and yet keep on getting pushback from the oil companies and folks who deal in this industry.

KATIE PAVLICH, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. The White House has been trying to pin the blame for a lack of supply and increased cost of gas on the oil companies, saying that they have 9,000, they've called them leases and permits. Leases, of course, are very different than permits. You can have a lease, but then you have to apply for a permit, and it can take days. It has to go through a very long bureaucratic process to make sure it checks a number of different boxes both at the federal and the local level.

But the White House now has the advantage of using Vladimir Putin as the excuse for high gas prices while continuing this argument here at home that we need to transition to alternative form of energy, that because gas prices are so high, now is our opportunity, as Pete Buttigieg has said, to buy that electric car. And so they actually, the rebranding is good for them, but it's bad for the American consumer.

And when it comes to actually producing more oil in the United States, the White House is capable of telling the Bureau of Land Management to be faster on the permitting process to approve more drilling here in the U.S., and yet they haven't done that.

And the question that keeps getting raised by Jen Psaki at the White House is, well, they have all these permits, why aren't they drilling? It's because the administration from the beginning, day one, and also through personnel choices they have made to be in charge of a lot of this process, have made it very clear that they're not interested in continuing to expand oil and gas. They want to make sure that it's not only just limited, but also eliminated long term.

BAIER: Juan, I want to get to this MiG-29 back and forth. You heard Senator Sasse say it's botched and kind of all over the place. "National Review" also calls it that. They say, "The statement," from Kirby yesterday about Poland, "was baldly disingenuous. From either Poland or Germany, it would be Ukrainian, not American pilots, flying the MiGs into Ukraine. In essence, it was fine as Poland as a NATO nation to take a risk, but when that risk, however remote, extended to the U.S. as a NATO nation, the administration backed away." What do you think about this and now where we are on this public no MiGs to Ukraine?

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's a very narrow needle, and the United States and NATO have to thread that needle. We're in a situation, just pause for a second to understand -- Poland understands that if the Russians cut through Ukraine, well, then you are going to get to Latvia, Estonia, Latvia, and the next step in terms of their effort to rebuild the former Soviet Union would be to go into Poland. So, they are aware that they need to support the Ukraine as a matter of self-interest.

And they are therefore looking for every way in which to support the Ukraine. But they don't want to do it in such a way that they would be at the frontline. They would rather have the United States, NATO, even Germany, because they've suggested that the Poles could send the jets to Germany and then Germany could forward them to the Ukraine. They're putting everybody else on the library.

But for the United States, for our interests in this, it's very clear that we do not want to start World War III. And I think that there has to be a way that can you support Ukraine without allowing Vladimir Putin to claim that the United States is involved with provocations, or even that the former states, Latvia, Estonia, and the like, are now trying to undermine Russia, and again, further justify what I think is unprovoked aggression by Russia towards Ukraine.

BAIER: I get that, Juan. But you don't think that Putin lumps in flowing in 17,000 Stingers and Javelin missiles? You don't think that's equal to MiG-29s going in? Where is the distinction in Putin's mind the line is, oh, wait a second, this is going to escalate it?

WILLIAMS: Well, he said, Bret, that he considers, you know, a no-fly zone just such a provocation. He has never said that about the other steps that you just articulated.

BAIER: All right.

WILLIAMS: And so when you think about that, you understand why the MiGs are a step higher. That really does raise the bar.

BAIER: Mollie, there is that concern about getting drawn into something bigger, and the World War III issues. And that comes up time and time again. And it's real. It's not a small concern.

HEMINGWAY: Exactly. We do not want to be in nonstop escalation loop. We do not want the disaster that is happening in Ukraine to spread to other countries. And this is an unstable situation, and because of economic issues in play, there is instability and financial costs that are being born in other countries and by people least capable of handling those.

So this really is important that we have policies, that they work together. It's what I was saying before with NATO and Poland and the U.S. clearly didn't have their messaging on the same page. We need a strategy that we execute without bringing on much greater conflict.

BAIER: Yes, but bombing maternity and children's hospitals is tough to watch, no matter what. Panel, thanks.

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