As Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair, Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of the 2024 presumptive GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump (and wife of Eric Trump), continues to host her podcast The Right View via the conservative media company Right Side Broadcasting Network.
As seen in the clip below, Ms. Trump criticized President Joe Biden and his administration for “shutting down the Keystone pipeline,” which she claims has caused inflation and gas prices to go up.
Note: On his first day in office in 2021, President Biden cancelled permits for the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, an expansion of the existing Keystone Pipeline which was never completed, never operational. The U.S. continues to receive oil from Canada through the original Keystone pipeline.
RNC Chair Lara Trump says that Russia invaded Ukraine and Hamas attacked Israel because Biden canceled the Keystone pipeline. pic.twitter.com/0MTWGSAZWO
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 9, 2024
Ms. Trump, without providing evidence to back up her claims, said that Biden’s decision to “shut down” the Keystone Pipeline “gives us on the world stage a really weak position.” She added: “You probably wouldn’t have seen the war with Russia in Ukraine without that decision. You wouldn’t see the war with Israel and Hamas without that decision.” She concluded: “Really dumb stuff coming out of the Biden administration.”
Petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy.com, said of the false narrative around Keystone XL Pipeline: “It’s like saying a highway that was built but never completed is somehow making your commute to work way longer. You never got to ride on that highway. It was never opened. It was never relied on.”
Note: On December 7, 2022, the original Keystone Pipeline System did literally shutdown due to a massive leak of oil (588,000 gallons of tar sands crude) in Kansas. The next day U.S. oil prices rose about 4 percent.