Rep. Kat Cammack rips Biden for failure to plan early to deter, punish Russian invasion of Ukraine

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) blasted President Joe Biden on Wednesday for what she called "deliberate negligence and misdirection" with regard to preparing the U.S. for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The congresswoman told the John Solomon Reports podcast that the intelligence community had provided accurate information ahead of time for the Biden administration to take appropriate precautions regarding Russia and Ukraine.

"[I]t's beyond a failure to plan," Cammack said. 

"You know, the intelligence community has been accurate in their assessments for the last year when it comes to the Ukraine-Russia conflict," she noted, adding that Congress had authorized lethal aid in the fall but it was "slow-walked by this administration."

The Biden administration's "half-assed attempts when it came to the sanctions" by only sanctioning some oligarchs and industries but not others allowed Putin to take it "as a green light, not a red light" for the invasion of Ukraine, Cammack said.

The U.S. sanctions are too little, too late, in Cammack's view. "If we were going to get tough and do this the right way, we should have been all in last year," she said.

"We should have been all in on the SWIFT banking," she continued. "We should have certainly, on the domestic energy front, said, 'You know what? We're going to authorize the permits that are outstanding, we're going to approve the six LNG applications that have been pending for the entire time that the Biden administration has been in office, we are going to start up the economic engine that the … domestic energy industry provides for this country, and we're going to go back to being energy independent. And heck, we're going to start exporting, and we're going to do it to the EU. We're going to help our friends in Germany become less reliant on Russian energy.'"

The Biden administration "didn't do that," Cammack said. "And it speaks volumes of the fact that Biden would rather do business with an ayatollah, who screams, 'Death to Israel, Death to America' and a socialist dictator who has no regard for human rights or the rule of law. He would rather do business with them than with American companies who can produce clean, safe, and efficient energy for our country in the world."

The energy crisis the U.S. is experiencing, partly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, could have been avoided, Cammack argued.

Biden "absolutely lied" about not restricting American energy production, she said, "and then doubled down on that lie when Jen Psaki stood in front of the press corps and stated that there were 9,000 leases that were going unused.

"There's 9,000 leases that are going unused because this administration has refused to approve a single permit. They have refused, flat-out, every single attempt to ... produce energy here in the United States, but more than that, the regulatory environment, the framework that they have created with all the red tape and all these heavy-handed bureaucrats, have forced these industries to go dark."

Cammack urges sober consideration of the potential consequences of imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The idea is "a good talking point, but let's be honest, we're not interested in starting World War III," she said. 

"Enforcing a no-fly zone is much different than talking about it," she added. "And enforcement means you actually have to have boots on the ground and capabilities and weaponry in country to take Russian jets down. That is only possible if we have an active role on the ground.

"And I don't know about you, but I am not ready to send American men and women into battle to fight for a war that is not ours to secure a border that is not ours when we have an open border crisis playing out on our southwest border. I'm not there yet, despite the fact that there's been a lot of talk about it. I think if people really understood what a no-fly zone was, and what it took to enforce it, they would think twice."