quick take
Former President Donald Trump repeated false claims about a Russian natural gas pipeline, US energy production, and the 2020 US presidential election in a four-minute video posted on Facebook by his eldest son, Donald Jr. YouTube removed the entire video from its platform to spread misinformation.
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On “Season 2, Episode 5” from his podcast “royal america”, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel interviewed former President Donald Trump. But YouTube removed that interview from its platform on April 1 for violating its terms of service, McDaniel. saying the washington times.
“YouTube said the video was removed for violating the site’s ‘election integrity policy’, which prohibits content promoting false claims that widespread fraud changed the outcome of the US presidential election,” outlet wrote in its april 1 article.
Three days later, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., aware a four-minute video clip of that interview on his Facebook page. The video is titled “Trump: Here’s What the Media Isn’t Telling You About Ukraine and Biden.”
In the video, which has almost 790,000 views, the former president assures that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine “if the [U.S. presidential] the elections had not been rigged.”
As we have written Many times before, there is no evidence to support claims of widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
in his bookWilliam Barr, who served as US attorney general under Trump, writes that he told Trump in a December 1, 2020 meeting at the White House that the Trump campaign’s claims of widespread fraud are ” silly stuff”.
“Our mission is to investigate and prosecute real fraud,” Barr remembers telling Trump. “The fact is that we have looked at the main claims that people are making about him, and they are bullshit.”
But the election claims weren’t the only false claims the former president made in his interview with McDaniel.
north stream 2
Trump falsely claimed that he “finished” Nord Stream 2, the Russian pipeline that would double the export of Russian natural gas to Germany. He then wrongly added that President Joe Biden “opened it.” He made the same inaccurate claims at the Conservative Political Action Conference in late February.
Triumph: I was the one who killed Nord Stream. … No one had heard of it until I arrived and complained. And then I turned it off. And never has anything that big happened to Russia, shutting down Nord Stream 2 and then Biden came in and opened it up almost immediately. He couldn’t believe it.
As we explained before, Trump signed into law a defense bill in December 2019 that included sanctions against companies building Nord Stream 2. Construction of the pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany and parallel to the Nord Stream 1 operational — was suspended in response to sanctions. But the pipeline was 90% complete at the time, and construction started again in December 2020, while Trump was still in office.
The Biden administration also opposes the bill, but, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service“US officials have suggested that the Administration’s ability to prevent the pipeline from becoming operational is limited, even with additional sanctions.”
Biden sanctions waived against those involved in the Nord Stream 2 project in May 2021, and the pipeline was completed in September 2021. But it is not operational yet, and only Germany controls that. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrested the required certification process on February 22, the day on which putin Recognized two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as independent states and sent Russian troops to the Donbas region of Ukraine.
Still wrong about energy independence
The former president again pushed for a Republican talking point, saying the United States was “energy independent” when he was in office. But the country still depended on foreign sources of energy, including oil.
Trump is likely talking about the US being a net exporter of energy during his administration, as it was in 2021 under Biden.
Triumph: We are and were recently energetically independent. We were producing more energy than Russia or Saudi Arabia. We were going to be twice the size of both of them in a very short period of time, probably within 12 months. But we were energy independent for the first time in more than 72 years, and that was deadly for Russia because we lowered the price of energy.
As we have written, some people may be under the false impression from such claims that “independent energy” means that the US relied solely on the energy it produces. it wasn’t and some energy analysts say that it is not likely to happen in the short term.
However, US primary energy exports exceeded imports under Trump in 2019 and 2020. Those were the first times that had happened since 1952, almost 70 years ago, according to the US Energy Information Administration. But the US was also a net exporter of energy in 2021, under Biden, The latest EIA figures show.
In 2020, the US was also a net oil exporter for the first time since at least 1949. (TThe United States continued to be a net importer crudespecifically.)
US net oil imports began to decline in 2006. the EIA saying a decline in global demand during the COVID-19 pandemic ultimately made the US a net exporter. The country was still a net exporter in 2021 under Biden.
Trump is correct that the US produced more energy than Russia or Saudi Arabia during his tenure, but that has been the case since at least 1980 for Saudi Arabia and 1992 for Russia. How far do the EIA data go?. Just for oil and other liquids, it depends on how that form of energy is measured. In Btu, or British Thermal Units, the US produced more than Russia but not Saudi Arabia in 2015. In 2018 and 2019, the US produced more than either country. The EIA chart only covers 2019.
measured in million barrels of oil per dayThe US has outperformed either country in oil and other liquids in most years, since 1973 for Saudi Arabia and 1992 for Russia. In recent years, the US has outperformed Saudi Arabia from 2013 to 2021 and Russia from 2012 to 2021.
In 2020, Trump’s last year in office, the US produced 18.6 million barrels of oil per day, while Russia produced 10.5 million and Saudi Arabia produced 10.8 million. The figures were similar for 2021.
The US has been buying Russian oil for years
Trump may have left the wrong impression on viewers when he said that we are now “buying energy from Russia,” emphasizing the word “Russia.”
The United States has been buying oil from Russia for years, even when Trump was in office. Watch this graph from the EIAwhich shows that imported oil from Russia rose through most of the 2000s, fell after 2011, and then started rising again in 2019. As we previously reported, Russia accounted for 7% of total US crude oil and oil imports. in 2020, and aabout 7.9% in 2021.
However, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden signed an executive order on March 8 by blocking new US purchases of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal.
Sources
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