PUNTA GORDA, Florida–Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reacted strongly to President Biden’s State of the Union address, saying that most of the domestic issues the country is facing now are of “Joe Biden’s own creation.”
“It’s striking that so many of these problems have been created by Biden in his administration since he’s been president,” DeSantis told reporters at a March 2 press conference.
“Think about gas,” he said. “People are chafing at the pump because you’ve had a 40 to 50 percent increase in the price of gas.” There is a reason for the hike, he added.
“They shut down the Keystone Pipeline–no oil from Anwar, nothing on federal lands,” he said, sounding exasperated. “So, consequently, you’re importing more from countries like Russia. That’s bad for consumers because they’re paying higher, but then it’s also bad for our national security.”
DeSantis, a Republican, said America was energy independent before Biden took office and blamed the administration’s “misguided policies.”
“We were energy independent, and we should be energy independent,” he said. Citing “really misguided policies that have been done over the last year, ” he called it “a huge problem.”
On Russian aggression against Ukraine, DeSantis did not hold back, calling President Vladimir Putin an “authoritarian gas station attendant.”
“It’s a hollowed-out country,” he said of Russia. “… except for the energy. And they have nuclear weapons, which makes them much more dangerous.”
DeSantis told reporters he believes Putin did not anticipate the resistance he has gotten from the Ukrainian people.
“He’s in a situation where his ideology is to reassemble some of the lost glory of what they had,” he said, adding that “by no means” was the Soviet Union a “glorious entity” but, instead, one of the most “evil regimes in modern history.”
