NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Banking Committees, today joined Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News to discuss addressing America’s problems first, historic inflation catalyzed by Biden’s war on American energy, and other crises created by the Biden Administration at home and abroad.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on why he will vote against the Ukraine aid package: “I’ll be a no on the package, Maria. It’s, as Senator [Rand] Paul said, we’ve got crises erupting across the nation. In my home state, mothers can’t get baby formula in Knoxville. You’ve got grandmothers and mothers that have sons and grandsons that won’t come home because of fentanyl overdoses because of the illegal drugs that are flowing across our southern border that President Biden will not protect. You’ve got crime running rampant across America, and people need to look at our nation and think we’ve got to look at… our own national security first, as Senator Paul has said. Other nations are watching us, too. China is seeing us not behave like a serious nation, rushing to put more aid into a country, who, again, I certainly don’t have anything against the Ukrainians. We want to see them win, but pumping more aid into that country when we’re not taking care of our own country—the best thing that Biden could do is stop the war that he’s waged on American industry. That would lower prices overall, that would take the funding away from Putin’s war machine against Ukraine. It would make our economy do better here. Biden will not do that. Biden will not be serious, and it’s taken us into a very bad direction. So, he just wants to throw another 40 billion dollars of American money into this when you’ve got other nations more approximate—the European nations that have sort of stayed with us, but they haven’t done this level of investment […] I know that there are other senators that are thinking very hard about this right now, as I have done. And I think it’s going to be up to each one’s conscience. We’ve already committed a great deal of money to this effort area. And I know that people are concerned that that money is being well spent, and we should certainly take effort to oversee that very carefully. At the same time, we have got to take care of things here at home first. That’s our primary duty.”
Hagerty on Biden’s refusal to take responsibility for historic inflation: “No one is taking responsibility for this in the Biden Administration. In fact, he’s waging war on Americans, you know, calling us every name in the book, you know, looking for scapegoats here in America with the previous president or trying to blame this on Vladimir Putin, as you said, this was well underway before Putin, you know, waged his war on the Ukraine. It wouldn’t be happening if Joe Biden had not waged war on American energy in the first place. We’ve got to get our hands around this and throwing more money at the problem is not the way to do it. Just the stimulus package that he created back in March of 2021 was just like pouring gas onto the inflationary fire. And then the continued talk about five trillion, six trillion, seven trillion-dollar packages just creates an expectation of inflation, which, again, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This, every step this Administration has taken has been toward more inflation.”
Hagerty on Biden-Administration-precipitated crises at home and abroad: “I think it’s got to be the only strategy they have is deflection. They certainly aren’t taking responsibility for what they’ve done, but the American public see right through this. Again, when you can’t get baby formula right here in Tennessee, when you’ve got policies that are creating crime across America, and a border that’s completely unprotected, people see through this Administration, and Biden has one failure after the other—to point to the failure of Afghanistan has precipitated, you know, global concern about America’s posture, our adversaries obviously emboldened. That’s stepped up Putin’s activity in Ukraine. China’s stepped up its activity in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. North Korea is back at it again. The world is a more dangerous place, thanks to Joe Biden. And what does he do? Blame Americans.”
Hagerty on leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to Japan: “A great deal of concern about America’s strength and posture toward China. That’s why I led a congressional delegation with two senior senators—Senator [John] Cornyn from Texas, Senator [Ben] Cardin from Maryland—a bipartisan delegation to basically demonstrate to that part of the world that China still is our number one concern. They’re our longest, mid-term, long-term strategy, strategic adversary. They’re the most critical adversary that we’ve got right now. We’re not going to let what’s happening in Ukraine take our eye off that ball. What we need to see is a strong America right now. That’s what the world needs to see. Certainly, that region needs to see it. And we were there to show that we’re standing shoulder to shoulder with Japan, who is our strongest ally there. It’s important to convey that message to China. It’s also important to convey that message to North Korea. Standing together, we’ll do far better. We also were looking for economic opportunities to work together, you know, more semiconductor manufacturing opportunities to work with Japan, with South Korea, to manufacture semiconductors right here in America. That’s absolutely critical. We also have to stand strong together, though, against China. And the thought of taking away the tariffs while getting nothing for it—that’s just ridiculous.”
Hagerty on Biden’s failed China strategy: “China is a threat at every turn, whether it’s militarily, diplomatically, or economically. If you look at the technology, we’ve got great opportunity right now because we were able to block Huawei from U.S. and Japan, the first and the third largest markets in the world. We need to take that opportunity. We need to work together to seize it. There was a lot of pressure put on China with the tariffs that were put in place in the last Administration; very painful putting those tariffs in place. And the Biden Administration is talking about taking them away as if that’s going to have some sort of impact on inflation right here in America. The biggest impact that Biden could have on American inflation is to stop his war on American energy; get us back in the energy business. Not only would it help us here in America, but it would help around the world.”
Hagerty on Democrats using the Supreme Court opinion leak to distract Americans: “Look, the focus of this is clear: it’s intimidation, Maria. They leak this draft opinion to hopefully—I think their view is that that would allow people to get out and intimidate and change the opinion of these justices that are in the process of deliberation. There is U.S. code against this. They’re standing by and watching the law be violated by these protestors. This intimidation, I pray doesn’t get any worse, but it is very, very disheartening. It’s against the law. And again, it’s part of the Democrat strategy, I think, to deflect from the real issues that Americans are worried about, the real issues that have most of the country understanding that we’re going the wrong direction. And this is yet another deflection by the Democrats to try to get the American public to look the other way.”
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