Sen. Blackburn: Biden’s Energy Crisis “Intentional”

Today on Sekulow, Senator Marsha Blackburn joins us.

She believes President Biden's energy crisis is intentional. We'll talk about that more today on Sekulow. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right folks, we got a packed show today. Everybody joining live. We want you to be part of the show too at 1-800-684-3110.

So the next segment of the broadcast is just a few minutes. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a great friend of the ACLJ, is going to be joining us. We're going to be talking about, again, energy prices. She believes it's intentional. You got a lot of phone calls from folks who agree with her.

And I did to a point, what I want to ask her about, what I can't wait to ask her about is, I do believe that to a point. I just wonder if it got out of control for the Biden administration. Like, I do think they wanted gas to be more expensive.

I'm not sure they wanted it to be seven, you know, eight, nine dollars. And of course, we see the President now going to Saudi Arabia, having to kiss the ring because of his comments as a Presidential candidate. And again, it's not that Saudi Arabia is perfect. It's that they are a key security ally. So there were, you know, with Secretary Pompeo, who's part of our team, I heard him yesterday when I was traveling and he said, he said, listen, we sanctioned the people that were involved with Khashoggi.

We sent the message, but it's not worth risking our relationship with Saudi Arabia and with Israel, all those different parts they play. So now President Biden's going over there. They say it's not for oil and gas. There's only two countries that he's meeting with that don't have oil and gas.

I mean, it's like, it's ridiculous. But we're talking about that with Senator Blackburn. We're going to get into some with her on the Supreme Court security, which the Senate passed way back in May, May 9th. But now the House is considering taking up after an assassination attempt.

Yeah. Well, the House also, it's interesting aspect of this, the House said that they wanted legislation that would include the law clerks and other people. Well, nobody even knows who the law clerks are. So recently, most people wouldn't be able to identify most Supreme Court justices by face. That's correct.

But now we're living in a different world right now. So I think the idea here is get the security in place because the protests... By the way, Merrick Gartland, the Attorney General could say, you know what, those protests going on in front of these justices' houses to influence opinions have to stop. There's a federal statute, we talked about it yesterday, that says don't do it.

But you get nothing from him, crickets. I mean, zero. It's amazing to me that you had an assassination attempt, which the general media didn't want to cover because it was a conservative. And on top of that, and this is what the, I guess, irony of the whole thing is, it presents a very difficult situation, I think, for the left because this was a guy that they'd accused here who was targeting a conservative. Not even the author of the opinion. It's an interesting aspect of that.

Yes. There's a lot more to it than we know. Yeah, because he's one of the more high-profile Supreme Court justices because of what the left did to him during his confirmation, his how long his confirmation took. Kind of like, similar to with Clarence Thomas, these are a few people that they could actually recognize by image or by name because they were so trashed by the Democrats in their hearings.

And it's inappropriate too. Then we're going to talk about, there's a very interesting thing, you know, the January 6th had their second hearing yesterday. We're not going to get into discussing hearings. But it was very interesting that the chairman, Chairman Thompson, said no criminal referrals coming out of this case, out of their investigation, which got an immediate reaction from his vice chair, Liz Cheney, saying, you know, well, that's not exactly what we were planning. Or we haven't decided that yet. And Adam Schiff was asked that while he was on with Anderson Cooper last night and was stunned.

He said we don't have the authority. Yeah. So it shows you that they've been prepping for this for months, 18 months. And then when it comes down to it, they can't even get their messaging right. It shows you the political theater that's involved in all of this. Yes.

And then it really wasn't ever about an end game. I mean, listen, DOJ can do whatever they want. They didn't have to wait 18 months though, either.

No. They didn't have to wait for congressional hearings if they thought that there needed to be criminal charges brought against official branches of government. But the idea here that they say they don't have the authority and then it's confusing. I mean, it's confusing to their own members of their party.

It's confusing to Liz Cheney. That's wonderful to me because I think the whole thing is a waste of time, a waste of resources, and won't get to the real questions, which is why the security wasn't there. Like yesterday, the Supreme Court, they knew there was going to be a big protest. There was lots of security. So guess what? There was a big protest. It may have been on the news because it's interesting to look at, but it wasn't on the news because there was a security concern. They didn't block the justices from being able to do their job.

But I know outside of our office door, there were like 20 bike cops right there. So they were ready to go. We'll be right back, Senator Marsha Blackburn. All right, welcome back to Secular. We're joined by a great friend of the broadcast, great friend of the American Center for Law and Justice, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who fights for all of us in Tennessee, but really the whole country and conservative values.

And Senator Blackburn, I want to thank you for joining us today on Secular. I want to go right to the energy crisis in our country. You actually have said, and I tend to totally agree with you, that President Biden and his administration took these energy policies to drive up prices, and they did so intentionally.

That is exactly right. This is implementing the Green New Deal through executive fiat and executive orders because they knew they could not get it through Congress. So this is how they're trying to achieve their end. And of course, they justify what they're doing because they've wanted $5 a gallon gas for quite a period of time now. They feel like people will drive less. People will begin to seek out alternatives. They will go for hybrid cars. They will go for electric cars.

But see, the left never stops to realize that there's a whole lot of us that can't afford an electric car that don't have $60,000 we want to go spend on a vehicle, and that we're depending on having those automobiles that are going to use regular gas. Right. Senator, this is Jay. I wanted to ask you this because I agree with you also. I agree with what you and Jordan have been talking about, that I think this was an intentional move on the Biden administration. But the follow-up to that has to be, it's now gotten out of control because we're hearing from your constituents and people all over the country. If we open our phone lines and say, let's talk about energy costs, we could literally sit in our studio for a day answering questions. So what the American people and what your constituents and our members around the country are worried about is, what can we now do to deal with this?

Because we were energy exporters. We were energy independent just 24 months ago. So what can you do as a Senator to help alleviate what is becoming a dire situation for families?

Yeah, and Jay, that's the question that comes up in every one of our meetings that we have. What can you do about it today? And here is what could be done about it today. First of all, we need the American people to be pressuring this White House because they're completely out of step with where the American people are on this. And as you said, we've gotten to a crisis situation when the price of a gallon of gas nationally is $5.

The average is $5. So what they could do today, if they wanted to, is reverse some of these executive orders that they have put in place on the energy sector, like the Keystone Pipeline, like taking Alaska offline, like taking offshore drilling offline, like ending fracking. And they could also begin to lift some of the regulations. You know, Joe Biden has put in place 69 regulations since he went into office.

The majority of those are centered on the energy sector. So halt the regulations that you have put in place. And then it would give us time through the Congressional Review Act to pull these forward for review by Congress, for Congress to have an up or down vote on this. And those are things that can be put in place today. And indeed, Congressional Review Acts or CRAs, they're called, that is something that we are working on right now.

That would help with the price at the pump. And then when it comes to inflation in general, which is really rocking everybody's world right now, what you need to do is first of all stop the out of control government spending. And by voting no on all of these spending bills, you need to vote no on all of these spending bills. We are keeping them from spending more money.

That's important to do. The American people need to support us in those efforts. I'm very, I appreciate you saying that, Senator, because I don't want the American people, Jordan, to lose hope here. And Senator Blackburn is really laying out common sense initiatives that could affect pricing immediately.

Yeah, and we do see that this pressure has gotten to us. Ultimately, President Biden, it's like they didn't want to do the trip. They've canceled it once.

They've now resettled it. He is heading to the Middle East. He's heading to Saudi Arabia to, in a sense, kiss the ring because of what he said on the campaign trail about Saudi Arabia. But while it's not doing what I think it should be doing in America to unleash American energy, it does seem like there is pressure and there is some hope. And I think Americans are looking for that, that even before election cycles and before we get to November, that we can put that pressure and that the administration, they may try to couch it, they may try to deny that they're going to Saudi Arabia for energy issues, but we all know that they are.

They are indeed, because they've stopped production here. Now, Jordan, here is something with the Keystone Pipeline. If he restarted it today, and by the way, it would have been finished by late of 2022, this year, had he not stopped it. But the Keystone Pipeline, getting that in place is 830,000 barrels of oil per day. Right now, we are importing just under 700,000 barrels of oil per day. Get these drill permits out to wildcatters, independents, big oil companies that have leases but cannot drill on those leases because the Biden administration is not giving them the drill permits. Well, if I was advising one of these oil companies as an attorney, and I'm an attorney, but if I was advising one of them, I would say, you know, probably don't go down this path with this administration.

Not that you wouldn't want to for jobs if you really believe, because who would trust an administration who's got a President that said this on the campaign trail, there will, quote, be no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill period in America and irreversible path towards doing away with fossil fuels. So it would be hard to advise the board of directors for a smaller company, bigger company, to say, yeah, put the resources in if you got the permit because the law, the red tape you got to go through, by the time you go through it, they'll end up going back to this policy. Well, and the thing is, that is why it is important for Congress to provide certainty and stability and to end this back and forth.

Like I said, they can't get the Green New Deal through Congress. So they've decided to do it by executive fiat. All right, Senator, this is something that I deal with. I've been dealing with the Supreme Court for 40 years, and I am obviously was horrified both with the leak of the opinion in Dobbs, which was unprecedented, and then the what is literally an assassination attempt on Brett Kavanaugh. I know you've been working closely with legislation to get real protection for the Supreme Court justices who are now basically under attack. What's the status of things right now and how serious of a threat do you see this to our democracy? It is quite a serious threat. And the fact that you had a bill that would do plussed up protection for the Supreme Court, and it went through the Senate on a voice unanimous vote, unanimous, and went over nearly a month ago to the House.

And Nancy Pelosi is still sitting on it and does not think that the justices are facing any kind of threat. This is absolutely appalling. And it is imperative that they be given protection. And you know Merrick Garland ought to go out here. It's a violation of federal law, a violation of federal law, 18 USC 1507.

And he should say, you cannot go and protest right at their property edge, banging your drums, ringing your bells, tooting your horns, disrupting the peace in the community where these justices live. You have to stop doxing them and putting the information online where they go to church, where their children go to school. This is a threat. It is intimidation. It is against the law. If you want to protest, go to the public square and carry out your protest, but do not do it in front of their house, banging on all of your drums and things at all hours of the day and night. Well, you know, as you said, there's federal law that prohibits this kind of activity in front of a judge's house for the purposes of intimidating that judge as respect to an opinion. And Merrick Garland has been crickets, nothing on this.

And I think it's outrageous. Senator, we appreciate you being with us. Appreciate your fight. And you gave some concrete things that can be done on the energy issue that we're going to continue to reiterate. And it's great working with you and thanks for being on the broadcast.

You got it. Take care. That's Senator Marsha Blackburn and folks, again, she's a great friend of ours, but a true supporter too of the work we do at the ACLJ. And I think when you talk about the issue of the Judiciary Committee on the economic issues and speaking out and not just for her constituents in Tennessee, which she does a great job of doing, but for so many conservatives on issues like life too as well, which we've talked to her about through those judicial nomination process. We'll be talking to her a lot too when that decision comes out of the Supreme Court. So again, just one of those relationships that the ACLJ has that is great.

And I'm glad she was able to join us today. We're also going to have Rick Rinnell joining us today, part of our team on the Saudi trip on what's going on there with some of our national security issues as well. I always think when our economy is hurting and we're already in kind of these national security messes, we are very vulnerable. We become much more vulnerable, even as a powerful country. And I think that we're still on the edge of potentially losing our super power status as the number one superpower status at any moment with this administration.

I think you're absolutely right. Hey folks, if you're on our social media, any of our social media platforms, Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, we encourage you to share this with your friend. We've got a lot of people watching. If you're listening on radio, we've got a lot more ahead, so stay tuned, but also support the work of the ACLJ.

You do that at ACLJ.org. Again, if you're on social media platforms, share it with your friends. Back with more in just a moment. All right, welcome back to Second Hill. We are taking your phone calls too today. 1-800-684-3110. A lot to talk about. So we just had Senator Blackburn on, so you got questions about the oil prices, the gas prices, what's going on in the United States on the Supreme Court security as well. We have calls on that as well.

1-800-684-3110. I would put this, you know, if it was a Justice Kagan or Justice Sotomayor, now that I wish that upon anybody what Brett Kavanaugh had to go through with the police there and the security. But these bills would have been passed immediately. I mean, it wouldn't have been a question.

It wouldn't have been bipartisan support. Let me go to William in Tennessee online too. Hey, William.

Thank you for taking my call. My question is, when you see the pictures of Justice Kavanaugh's home, it looks like he's in a neighborhood where the houses are fairly close together. What rights does Justice Kavanaugh's neighbors have regarding these protests you're speaking about? You know, I think I got to take you into kind of suburban Washington, D.C. So it's right outside Washington, D.C. Notice that's a sidewalk. That's not like a neighborhood. It's a public sidewalk. That's street parking that you see.

So very little, very little. I mean, the neighbors only real legal issue where you can limit someone's free speech when it's a public sidewalk is when you've got a law that's been deemed to be constitutional. There are laws that are in place that protect judicial officials. Different like when they go bang the drum in front of Mitch McConnell's house.

Yes. Because he, that's one thing to try to influence a politician. We have the right to do that. What you're not supposed to do is intentionally try and influence a judge or justice. Now, there is a legal issue you got to go at is, are they doing it intentionally? Now, we do know on this issue, it has to do 100% with one case.

It stops. That's the reason why they are there. So you can easily, you don't have to do a mass arrest. You just move them out, block it up, block the street off like they do in other places. It's happened in Justice Barrett's house too.

I think they just don't show that as much on a TV. So there is laws in place to protect them. Well, there is a federal law that's in place that says you cannot go to a judge's house for the purpose of trying to influence the opinion or an opinion in a case. Now, we know that there were no protests at any of these justices houses until the Dobbs opinion was leaked. So Merrick Gartland, Andy, does have the authority to utilize the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, to stop this.

Absolutely. Title 18 of the United States Code, and it's been the law for a long time, gives the Justice Department, the United States Attorney, and in this case, of course, the Attorney General of the United States, who's the head of the Justice Department, the authority to prosecute as a criminal offense anybody who attempts to influence or impede or harm a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, in this case, Associate Justice Kavanaugh, and in influencing a judgment or a decision. It's a crime to do that. Yeah, I think, again, the law is in place. Merrick Gartland just has to enforce it. And then there'd be no protests. You probably still need security for these justices right now.

You do definitely need the security legislation. Let's get that through for everybody, both sides of the aisle, every kind of justice, so they've got the security they need. But I don't think Merrick Gartland's going to stop, because they would have stopped it that day. The protesters came the same morning, after early morning hours, they found the guy, right?

He makes the phone call. Only reason they really got that guy before he heard a law enforcement official, at least, was because he called in on himself. He was having psychiatric issues, drug issues, and he kind of stopped himself. But he was ready to do it.

He was at least going to hurt. He had the weapons in place to kill a law enforcement official. If there was enough law enforcement, they'd probably stop him, but probably.

Okay, so he could have been in a very different situation. Later on that evening, the protesters are back. And the Department of Justice does nothing. It should have been an active crime scene, street shutdown, at least for that day. But the Department of Justice does nothing.

Now, the Democrats have said the same thing about Merrick Gartland. This is like a guy who is a captain who isn't captaining the ship. And when you don't captain the ship, you know what happens? It either sinks or it runs a foul. And so I think it's just a DOJ with a captain, no rudder.

Not good or bad. But here's what's interesting. So the January 6th committee has its hearing yesterday. Not a lot of attention drawn to it until Chairman Bennie Thompson, who's the chair of the committee, says that they are not going to be doing a referral as to President Trump or people in his orbit to the Department of Justice. So they don't have authority. Yeah, he actually said, we don't have authority.

Let me give you the exact quote. Our job is to look at the facts and circumstances around January 6th, what caused it and make recommendations after that. He said, when pressed on the matter and whether the committee had ruled out the possibility of referring criminal charges, particularly for former President Trump, Thompson replied, we don't have that authority. Now, Liz Cheney immediately responded saying the committee has not issued, has not gotten a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals, will announce a decision at the appropriate time.

She reacted. Anderson Cooper had on CNN Adam Schiff, and he was stunned when he heard what the chairman of the committee had said. Take a listen. The select committee's chairman, Bennie Thompson, told reporters tonight the committee will not be making any criminal referral to the Department of Justice regarding the former President or anyone else in his orbit. Do you agree with that decision? Even the committee uncovers evidence of criminal wrongdoing? You know, I haven't seen the chairman's statements.

We haven't had a discussion about that. So I don't know that the committee has reached a position on whether we make a referral or what the referrals might be. I thought we were deferring that decision until we concluded our investigation.

At least that's my understanding. So you have the chairman and the vice chair of the committee speaking two directly different positions on criminal referrals. We're talking about criminal referrals of former high-ranking government officials, and they're not in sync.

Not only in sync, they say the exact opposite. And then Adam Schiff, who's on the committee and was an impeachment manager, says, I thought we were going to wait afterwards. This shows you what's political theater. It is political theater, Jay. It was set up to be political theater. The screen, the positioning of all the members, the long drawn-out faces, the somber remarks, the terrible allegations, the chairman talking about racism and slavery, the Liz Cheney going off on President Trump, Adam Schiff sitting there, the impeachment manager who didn't make it in the impeachment, you know, all concerned.

This is nothing but political theater. So the activities that took place on January 6th were horrific. We all agree to that. Nobody disagrees. I think you got to be kidding. It was an attack on the nation's capital. Those people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But to have a committee hearing 18 months later when literally Rome is burning, when inflation is out of control, gas prices are through the roof, people can't get baby formula, we're begging the Saudis to produce more oil.

Why? Because we stopped being energy independent. And the administration says, and the President, Biden says today in a speech, to the AFL-CIO, I see green energy, I see new jobs. I mean, what world is he in? A very distorted world that only, again, I think he's surrounded by people who are, don't live in the real world, don't live in reality. I think that was the difference between President Trump. And sometimes people took that as, oh, this is too hard edge.

This isn't soft enough. People that live in the real world that have to make decisions about hiring, firing, and cost of, you know, how much they're going to pay employees, or if they've got to do layoffs, and all that. You know what?

It's not always a nice world. But President Trump brought that kind of group of folks in to help run the country. They have to make tough decisions. You know who President Biden's brought in? His children.

And I don't mean that just to downgrade. They're smart people that might have long careers at one point. But he's surrounded by inept bureaucrats. And kids who don't understand the bills. They don't understand, I don't think they understand the idea of inflation or gas prices.

They live in cities where they don't need to travel in cars. They don't understand the pain of maybe formula issues. Some of the other items I'm not going to get through that they're having trouble stocking now at stores. It's insane. But again, I want to go back to Senator Blackburn said this. She believes it's intentional. I do too. It might have gotten out of control. But I believe this is all intentional. The pain that you're feeling.

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ACLJ.org keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is secular. And now your host, Jordan secular.

Welcome back to secular. I want to take your phone calls too. And when you know, we take those calls and we got Rick on as well.

So you can continue calling it 1-800-68-4 31 10 with Rick. We're going to get into a little bit more about the Saudi trip because the President, again, having to eat his own words, he'd take his own medicine and have to he's again, he's making the trip. The crazy part is that they're denying it has to do we have any of the sound where they deny that this trip to Saudi Arabia, which is in mid July has to do with energy.

I mean, literally this is the White House press secretary, Kareem Jean-Pierre. No, it's not about that. When you go visit the Gulf States, even if that's not your number one issue, which it should be right now, it's, it's your number two issue. Always take a listen by five this engagement with Saudi Arabia on energy security as asking for oil is simply wrong. We know there are many issues, but you're not avoiding saying he's going to be dealing. What I did say is of course he will be, they will discuss energy with the Saudi government to look at this trip as it being only about oil is not, it would be simply wrong to do that.

Okay. So there are going to be two other agenda items, but let's be realistic. He's going over to Saudi Arabia because people can't afford to put fuel in their cars. We have not even talked about a winter coming up. I mean, cause it's in the heat of summer and heating oil prices are going to be through the, I mean, this is all part of, all part of a narrative where any, they're out of touch with the American people.

That's the problem. They are Jay, they are out of touch. What do you think he's going to Saudi Arabia for? I mean, he's not going there to buy sand. He's going there to try to get them to buy oil. Like he took a delegation and went to Venezuela to beg the dictators.

I mean, they're there to buy oil and to get them to produce oil. I mean, that's it. That's the reality.

I mean, listen to Joe Biden. This was, was this the AFL-CIO? This is today. Okay.

Oh my goodness. This is during inflation crisis. Everybody's admitted to that. Whether you like the way they've admitted to it, yelling, they've all admitted it's not what they thought it was going to be. This is real long-term inflation. This is what Joe Biden had to say to the AFL-CIO this morning, which I want to remind people is no longer the union that it once was.

It is now just a left wing, far left activist group because the most working Americans, even a lot of AFL-CIO members vote Republican now because it's better for their job. Take a listen to Joe Biden though. This is absurd. And by the way, Republicans like to portray me as some kind of big spender. We have spent a lot of money. Well, that's, it's easy to do when you got your son out there to get your business deals with China or the Ukrainians. Oh, wait, is he talking about our money or his money? Cause he, he also has never really worked. He just has his family out there getting deals done while he has some public office that they can trade on. But we can't talk about that, right? We're not going to have a committee meeting on how he's owned by the Chinese and that's why he won't take real actions to defend Taiwan or why he was also compromised in Ukraine because of business interests there. We don't have select committees on, but this is actually, he's not talking about his own money.

He's talking about your money. And this is, that's how inflation continues is when you say I'm in a big spender and I'm going to keep spending big. I want to ask our audience, we did this Friday, we'll do it again. I bet they wish they could spend.

I'd like to do this again. I want to know how this in gas prices, fuel energy prices are affecting you, your family and your business. 1-800-684-3110. We're going to be joined by Rick Cornell. He's very concerned about this as well. He's one of our senior advisors. 1-800-684-3110. We want to hear from you on this today. It's that important.

800-684-3110. Yeah. So coming up, I mean with Rick Cornell, we'll talk and we'll take calls during that.

Rick is great at taking your calls as well. So we'll talk about this Saudi trip, how that impacts also our national security. Because again, oil, energy independence is national security. Yes, it's also the cost to you, but it's also what we're able to do as a country.

If you're a net exporter of energy, you're in a powerful place in the world. We saw that with Russia, how long it took for the world to say no to Russian oil and gas. And you know, we are paying a price for that, but that's not the only reason we're paying more at the pump.

That was just an extra reason. It's because a President came into office who said, we're done drilling. We're done fracking. We won't renew offshore drilling. And I love to spend lots of money.

Well, everybody would love to spend lots of money, but he's going to keep driving your inflation up. So give us a call 1-800-684-3110. All right, we are going to take your phone calls too.

Rick Cornell's joining us. He's our course our senior advisor for foreign policy and national security. Rick, I want to start right off with the trip they didn't want to make, they never wanted to make, they wanted to punish the Saudis for their pariah. Now they are making the trip, but they're denying it has anything to do with, you know, the priority is not about gas and oil, it's other security issues. I get that there's other security issues there too, but we know it's all about oil and gas.

But I want to start with Rick because in this situation, when we are facing this kind of inflation, the economy making the moves it's making today, that impacts our national security. And even our friends in the Middle East know that's time for, unfortunately, for them to also try to take advantage of us. I mean they're allies and friends, but they're also looking out for their best interest.

Yeah, for sure, Jordan. And let's be very clear about one thing. Add the Saudi policy from the Biden administration to the long list of strategic blunders. This is a team, the Biden team that early on thought that they could do their policy by picking a fight and poking the eye of the Saudis. They did this because they wanted to please Iran, they wanted to have an Iran deal, so they did a series of things. They took the Houthis off the terrorist list. They told the Saudis, go pound sand, we don't need you when it comes to energy or oil issues. They repackaged intelligence, manipulated intelligence like it was new and it wasn't new, to poke the Saudis in the eye over the Khashoggi issue after we had really confronted the Saudis and decided to move forward in that relationship. This strategic blunder from the Biden team is now coming back to haunt them because they need help on gas prices.

Every policy the Biden team has put into place has raised gas prices, add the Saudi relationship to that long list. Let's go to Mike in Maryland on line one. Hey Mike, welcome to Secular, you're on the air. Hey sir, how you doing?

Great. So just like to comment, I'm in Waldorf, Maryland, I'm not too far from DC. We all saw the prices going up after Biden took office, but they're up to a point now, my wife and I both work, our gas prices, what it used to cost me to fill up a half a tank or three quarter tank gas now doesn't even fill up a quarter tank on my truck. Our shopping bills have gone up by $150 a week as a translated cost because of the transportation companies passing on the fuel costs to the food. My electric bill has gone up over $65 a month and we are very conservative anyway and now it comes to priorities what we actually have to have as opposed to all want and we're all pulling our belts a little tired. Yeah, you know, Mike, your story and Rick, we're getting this a lot. These are hardworking Americans that are, you know, it's to say sticker shock is an understatement because it is shock. I mean, listen, I filled up my gas tank the other day, I went out to dinner with my wife the other day with Pam and it is amazing how much it's increased and, you know, I always say elections have consequences and part of those consequences, Rick, are policies that don't work and here it's on, you know, it's really impacting the American people.

Well, first of all, I want to say to the caller, Mike, that we totally understand what he's going through. I have people in my family who are making tough decisions about driving, about trying to carpool to work, about what to pay for in terms of food and necessities. This is unacceptable in America. It feels like a third world country on what's happening. You go to the grocery store and as Mike probably knows, there are products on the shelves that used to be there so that we had choices with good prices and now you don't even have options.

There are no products there. We literally have been put into this situation because of bad policies and the fact is is that Joe Biden is trying to pretend like this is Putin's fault. This is Joe Biden's fault and it's terrible policy. Let's go to Adela in Tennessee on line two. Hey, Adela, welcome to Secular.

You're on the air. Hey, thanks for letting me speak up and speak out. Absolutely. My comment is this is Marcia Blackburn is my senator and she's a friend and she's totally on point. I get so tired of hearing the narrative that these people don't know what they're doing and they're inept and all this stuff. I honestly think this is totally intentional. The full-on strategy that we're seeing being played out, it was probably laid on the ground in Hillary's days of running for President. Trump interrupted everything and now we're seeing the results of that interruption through Biden. Adela, here's what's interesting and Rick, we talked about this earlier in the broadcast with Senator Blackburn who said that a lot of the energy issues that we're facing are in fact these were intentional moves by the Biden administration to create this increase to get people saying, you know, fossil fuels may not be so great looking at other sources of energy. And now the question that Jordan asked, which I think is the right one, even if that was their plan, do they expect it to have this kind of ramification?

So, you know, you've been around the Saudi Arabia. I mean now they're running, trying to figure out something. So I do agree with Adela, I agree with Senator Blackburn, Rick, that it was totally intentional. I think that they lost control though. It's like they lost control of inflation too. You can hear that with Janet Yellen. So it's all to blame on them because they campaigned on telling us they were going to do this. They just didn't realize, I don't think that, I don't think they could keep control anymore and it's why they're running off to Saudi Arabia now. Yeah, Adela is exactly right. It is strategic.

It is on purpose. And let me give you one example. The Biden team literally strategically said that we must drop the Trump sanctions on the Russian pipeline because they literally said this because it will entice, encourage Putin to lash out against that. Now their strategic analysis was so wrong because the opposite happened. They literally, by taking the Trump sanctions off the pipeline, they encouraged a war in Ukraine. They are literally, the Senate Democrats and the Biden administration worked to drop the Trump sanctions on a pipeline and then were surprised that a war happened when they thought the opposite was happening. And so I think it's not only incompetence, but it was really on purpose to push these policies that they should have seen don't work. And then lastly, let's be honest, they don't know how to adjust once they see a bad policy.

Once they see a bad policy that's wreaking havoc, stop, stop digging. Yeah, I want to play because this is Joe Biden this morning to hit on his favorite group, the AFL-CIO at Byte 17. And again, I want you to listen to this. And even if he's true here, I will explain why this is absurd. My plan is simple. First, I'm doing everything in my power to blunt Putin's gas price hype. Just since he invaded Ukraine, it's gone up $1.74 a gallon because of nothing else but that.

Okay. Now, Rick, let's say that's true, but he hadn't done all these other policies, Joe Biden. Then gas would be still under $4 a gallon because even if you just isolated what was happening in Ukraine, which you can't really do because all the other policies, but if you did and you just added $1.74 to where gas was when he came into office, we'd still be paying in most places, maybe California a little more, Rick, but in most places, the average would be under $4.

Yeah, for sure. Look, we have to push Biden, and we're not going to ever get this from the media in Washington, but we have to push President Biden to say, why did Putin invade Ukraine under you and not under Donald Trump? And the reality is that dropping the sanctions on the pipeline like the Biden team did and like every Senate Democrat did was the strategic blunder. It raised gas prices around the world, and it also encouraged a war. We had it under control under the Trump administration.

We weren't having these wars, and so this Putin price hike excuse is so ridiculous because Joe Biden caused the Putin action. Let's go. We don't have time yet for another call.

Rick, just to finish up with you, and we're going to continue to take your phone calls, so it's 1-800-684-3110 in the next area of the broadcast. I do hope that they do some work on the Abraham Accords and the work with Israel, too. It doesn't seem like they're in a good spot there with what they're doing in Jerusalem, but I hope they're just not ignoring that when they meet with all these countries. Yeah, I think they should start by actually calling it the Abraham Accord. They haven't quite uttered those words, and I think the success of the Abraham Accords would just mean that they should embrace them and try to further them.

We handed them a great portfolio from the Trump administration. The Saudis were very close to signing. If Joe Biden would have been able to continue a policy where we were literally bringing world peace, they might have been able to see the Saudis sign, but now they're in a heap of trouble with the Saudis. The Saudi leader doesn't even want to meet with the President of the United States. And you know what? I mean, the United States, we should never be in a heap of trouble with the Saudis because they should always be worried about us and their relationship with us, but this is why the world has changed.

That's what I said. When you start having to, like Rick said, be dependent on foreign aid for baby formula, people can't pay for gas, the world, they're feeling the pain, too, but they also look and say, well, the US is distracted on all these domestic issues. This is the time for us to take action, which in the past they might have really imposed us on, but right now aren't going to be paying attention to. And so lots of other things get out of control. And so whoever the next President is, they got a lot of work to even get back to that point.

And we're years away from that. We'll be right back on Sec Hill to take your calls. All right, welcome back to Sec Hill. We're going to take your phone calls, 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Really interesting call coming out of Roger in Colorado because we haven't gotten into all the federal land lease and how that all works and open lands, but folks out West understand this. And Roger, welcome to Sec Hill. You're on the air.

Well, thank you for taking my call. The question I have, and I think it's a common sense question, is don't the resources of the United States, gas, oil, and all this kind of stuff, don't those resources belong to the people of the United States and not a political party or a federal government or even state government? Couldn't it be the government's job to allow us to proper access to that when we need it? Well, they do have the ability to give you access to federal land leases on federal land. And so they can then sub that out to private companies, which does mean that the US government, that should trickle down to you, has an influx of resources so that would take things like inflation down. But that's a policy decision. And that's not their plan.

So great question from Roger. Do we have the energy resources domestically in the United States to do the job so we're not in this situation? 100%. So what we have to do is this. We've got to get behind. We're going to work closely. Our office is going to work closely with Senator Blackburn.

And what we're going to do is, and I just told our staff, I want to petition up. We got to go to Congress and say, we got to open this stuff up. And I think there may be some Democrats that in the Senate that realize this energy situation is out of control. And even if they started this intentionally, as Senator Blackburn says, as you said, Jordan, it is now, they can't contain it anymore.

So you've got to contain it. And the way to contain it is to open up energy resources domestically so we're not begging the Saudis or going down to Venezuela trying to get them to sell. No, I mean, listen, there is so much fracking to do in the Northeast, just in the Northeast of the United States, just in states, just in Northeast Pennsylvania. I mean, you could have so much being done, so many jobs created. But again, they came into office saying, we're not going to allow fracking. We're not going to drill.

We're not going to do this. Now, they're starting, here's where I think we put the pressure on where we work with Senator Blackburn. You know, in ACLJ Action, our C4 that I oversee too, and our team there, while we're preparing for Dobbs, that's a big push, obviously, for ACLJ Action right out of the V8. We're already beginning the early stages of conversations with ACLJ Action and energy companies to work together. So we're on this in the ACLJ to a point now that we weren't even able to do a few months ago, which is being able to work directly with some of those companies so that we can run campaigns on this energy independence issue. So we have broadened out to a point where, you know, I can tell you as ACLJ Action, if you look at ACLJAction.org, you'll see that is one of the top issues. And we're willing to work with those natural gas companies, work with those fracking companies, work with those oil companies on ways to get, because we're trying to improve your life and the lives of the American people.

It might be partisan in that Democrats have this view and Republicans have this view, but ultimately, what Senator Blackburn is saying is not just Republican, it's about America. And that's the work that we're trying to do at ACLJ Action. So I hope I encourage you to become a member of ACLJ Action.

It just costs $25 a year. So a $25 donation this year, you click that you want to become an actual member of ACLJ Action. You can do that at ACLJAction.org. Yeah, I'm looking at the website right now, actually, ACLJAction.org. And it said one of the top ones is energy independence. All right, let's go right back to the phones.

That's why joining ACLJ Action makes a lot of sense because we can work with, like Jordan said, ACLJ Action can work with the oil companies, work with the drilling companies to get us energy independent again. Diane calling from Michigan on line three. Hey, Diane, welcome to Secular. You're on the air. Hi, there. Hi, there. Hey, thanks. I appreciate you guys so much. And I'm just one another ticked off American, actually, because of the fuel price is costing so much and just taking a huge chunk out of my weekly budget at my home.

My husband drives an hour one way to work, and he got a great job in the trade. But it's still like making a huge impact on us. And so now we are like cutting back cable, cutting back every other so many other things in our lives in order to compensate for this. And it's like at this juncture of our life, why should we be doing this? That's exactly right.

That's 100% correct. America, your husband's working a good job. He's commuting. But an hour commute shouldn't kill your budget with oil and gas. You shouldn't have to worry about if you can keep your cable on or not when you're a hardworking American. I just can't believe for the life of me that these are decisions people are going to make. Think about that. People are having to make this decision at the age of our callers where they've been working on this.

Do I have to cut my cable so that I can afford to continue to live? And like I said, if the Biden administration did this intentionally, as Senator Blackburn said, it has gotten way, way out of control. This is what the White House said yesterday.

This is, again, the Korean John Pierre, who I think is totally out of touch, even more so than Jen Psaki to some extent, with just normal things that Americans are dealing with by 29. We are coming out of the strongest job market in American history, and that matters. And that, a lot of that is thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which only Democrats voted for that. Republicans did not.

And it led to this economic boom, this historic economic boom that we're seeing. What world are they in? I don't know. She doesn't look at the stock market. She's looking at, yes, there's a lot of jobs available, a lot of jobs available that won't pay the bills.

So that's the problem. Yeah, it's the service industry. There's plenty of jobs.

I see it all day every day. I might drive in and out of work, traveling yesterday. I see all the signs for jobs. But 15 bucks an hour right now, if you got a little commute or anything like that, cut that a few dollars right off the gate because you're paying it for gas. Your food is costing exponentially more. It's up even more than gas.

So I think, again, they really have no idea the pain. Now, let's take Laura's call out of Kentucky. Hey, Laura.

Hi. Here's my question. So all this craziness is being controlled by the OC, what's her face, you know, the left. So my question is, I don't understand that they wouldn't want to fight within their own party. What is it that they could actually do to Joe Biden that makes him so scared to, you know, realize that his whole presidency is in the toilet?

Well, I'll tell you what, exactly what they did this weekend. You had David Axelrod. You had all these Democratic leaders come out and say, Joe Biden should not run in 2024. That's exactly what's going on with Jimmy Carter. Out of touch, old, bad policies, low approval ratings. They're already doing that.

Yeah. I mean, so the Sharks are circling him, not Republican Sharks, the Democrat Sharks. They really don't see a Joe Biden running for reelection. Now, Joe Biden says he is, but you could be primaried and, you know, we'll see how that all plays out. That's a little bit far away, but they're already telling him 18 months into his presidency, we don't want you anymore in the Democrat party.

But you know what? That also has a big effect on Joe Biden, not just being President and getting to run for reelection. This is how his family funds their lifestyle, is by him holding public office and by them doing business deals. But I will tell you the takeaway from today's broadcast is there are things we can do, concrete things we can do, that we are going to do between the ACLJ and ACLJ Action to help you, the American people. Energy independence is part of our platform of agenda at ACLJ Action. And as Jordan said, we encourage you to support the ACLJ at ACLJ.org, but also join, it's $25 for membership one time. ACLJAction.org, we encourage you to do that. And don't forget, support, of course, the work of the ACLJ as well.

All right, folks, again, you can do that. ACLJAction.org, it's $25 to become an official member. You can donate more if you'd like, but that's what it costs to become a member.

It's an annual, so just once a year, $25. But of course, we encourage you, if you want to give more, the more resources we have at ACLJ Action, the more we can do. We're very upfront and honest about that.

That's how the C4 model works. So it's up to you how we get to decide where our budget is spent and how many states we're working in at ACLJ Action. Of course, we want you to support the work of the ACLJ as well at ACLJ.org. And we are on these issues for you. We're going to be fighting for you. We are fighting for you. We're fighting all together.