Even some Democrats are questioning Biden's reported decision to buy oil from the regime in Caracas, as Venezuela is Vladimir Putin's top ally in Latin America and a top oil exporter. But the Biden administration views Venezuela's reentry into U.S. energy markets as a way to mitigate the fallout at the pump from a possible oil embargo on Russia. The White House has announced that in exchange, the Venezuelan government has freed two jailed Americans, including an oil executive who was imprisoned alongside colleagues for more than four years, as it seeks to improve relations with the Biden administration amid Russia's war with Ukraine.
Humberto Fontova, an author and Latin American expert who escaped Fidel Castro's Cuban regime in 1961, thinks buying oil from Nicolás Maduro Moros is a bad idea.
"If we start buying oil from Venezuela, which is crummy oil, which is lousy oil, there's only a couple of refineries in the U.S. that can really handle it," he notes.
And recalling that America was in the business of exporting oil just a short year and a half ago, he thinks this move is preposterous.
"It's insane," Fontova submits. "We were energy independent, [and it is] unbelievable how quickly this thing just tumbled down the rat hole. It's unbelievable how quickly you can screw up a country so totally and completely as Biden did."
Fontova agrees with the "majority of the country" and does not think Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still in office, and he adds that the U.S. should not be propping up a man whose government is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for possible crimes against humanity committed against protesters in 2017.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., senior fellow on environmental policy for The Heartland Institute, agrees and says President Biden's energy policy is embarrassing and not even environmentally friendly.
"He's begging people to give us oil from overseas who have lower emissions standards and lower environmental standards, who have lower human rights standards, who have lower enforcement even of the standards they do have, and then shipped through ships which spill more than pipelines from thousands of miles away using marine fuel, which is a dirty fuel," Burnett explains. "It's crazy."
In addition to Venezuela, Biden has also contacted Saudi Arabia and Iran about oil since announcing the United States would no longer accept oil from Russia.
"He is simultaneously helping a different set of autocrats and harming the environment," Burnett asserts. "He's increased the carbon footprint from what it would be if we were producing that oil."
Biden has referred to climate change as "the greatest threat facing America." It is also among the stated reasons his administration wants to transition the nation away from fossil fuels and toward so-called clean energy technologies.
