Tucker Carlson is onto the Biden administration. Ol’ Joe Biden might pretend that he is sanctioning Russia in order to take a stand in support of a sovereign democracy, or to fulfill existing commitments to allied nations. But he’s not telling you the real reason that the U.S. is cracking down on the military incursions of Vladimir Putin. This is a war over oil.
Or more specifically: Not oil. That’s right, the U.S. is ready to intervene in Europe in order to end the use of fossil fuels, says Carlson. It was just one of several different tacts the Fox News host took to defend the actions of Russia during Tuesday night’s episode of his program, the most-watched cable news show in the country. But it was by far the strangest.
“It’s pretty clear,” Carlson said, as he spouted his theory with clarity comparable to oil’s. “If you’re closing pipelines in this country, and now you are provoking conflict with the largest gas supplier in Europe, maybe you’re making a play against fossil fuels.”
According to Carlson, this secret war is both ideologically and financially motivated. “They hate fossil fuels on principle,” he said of the Biden administration. “Kamala Harris ... has donors and friends who are making a ton from alternative energy, from renewables.”
There’s just a whole lot going on in this absolutely bizarre attempt at making it seem like clean energy requires warmongering — including a failure to acknowledge the many wars fought over oil and his and his network’s role in promoting those conflicts — but let’s try to parse through some of it, shall we?
According to OpenSecrets, alternative energy lobbying groups spent a total of $13.2 million in political contributions during the 2020 election cycle, 56% of which went to Democrats, with $1.2 million going to Biden’s campaign specifically. So yes, there is some financial interest flowing from the renewable energy lobby. But it pales in comparison to fossil fuel spending. The oil and gas lobby spent $115 million during the same period — nearly 10 times as much as clean energy groups — and put $1.6 million in the coffers of the Biden campaign. So if Biden’s following the money, he messed this one up; he got more from oil and gas than from renewables.
As for the ideological side of things, yes, Biden has committed to shifting the U.S. to renewable energy. That shift is not even remotely served by artificially increasing gas prices right now. This is the same administration that is currently considering a gas tax holiday to temporarily lower the price of gas and held the largest sale of land for offshore drilling in U.S. history. It has not exactly been anxious to completely ditch fossil fuels.
Also, this should go without saying, but apparently doesn’t because we live in the strangest times: We don’t have to go to war over wind or sunlight. Those energy sources have become increasingly affordable and viable over the last decade, and they’re also, y’know, natural.
Landing on anti-interventionist policies is a perfectly reasonable place to end up, but Carlson is taking some weird paths to get there. He tried out a pro-Putin take, argued that Ukraine isn’t a democracy anyway, and is now arguing that the U.S. wants war to stop fossil fuels. Whichever one resonates with his audience is likely the one he’ll keep pushing, because Carlson is the solar panel of the right-wing media ecosystem: He absorbs the rays of conservative rage and turns them into an endless source of money.
