On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Faulkner Focus,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued that the U.S. can remove Russia from the SWIFT financial system even if Europe doesn’t want to like it forced SWIFT to act against Iran under the Trump administration, but “Joe Biden refuses to do so.”
Cotton stated, [relevant remarks begin around 5:10] “Well, first, I think the president misjudged Vladimir Putin. He thought if he had enough phone calls with him and had enough meetings with European leaders, somehow, Vladimir Putin would stand down. It’s been clear to me for months he planned to go for the jugular in Ukraine. Second, President Biden is deeply beholden to the far left of his party, who are in the grips of a deluded ideology that we have to stop all fossil fuel production in America. And third, he’s handed the veto pen on sanctions to Russia. It’s not just oil and gas sanctions. It’s removing them from the international payment system known as SWIFT, as well. He admitted as much yesterday that Europe didn’t want to do it. Well, we put our foot down with Iran in that payment system during the Trump era, even though our European allies didn’t want to do that, either. We have the power to take these steps. Joe Biden refuses to do so.”
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