The Biden administration has been "timid" when responding to Russia's aggression against Ukraine from the beginning, even before the invasion happened, including with how sanctions were applied, Rep. Michael Burgess told Newsmax Tuesday.
"From the standpoint of the way the sanctions were begun and applied, it seemed they just put a little bit of pressure on to see if that was enough to make them stop," the Texas Republican said on Newsmax's "National Report," adding that with the thousands of Russian troops that were gathering at the Ukraine border in February, the list of sanctions was never going to be enough.
"Eventually the sanctions got much more robust, but in fact, it was only last week that the ban on Russian oil was passed," said Burgess.
He also said he doesn't understand why President Joe Biden immediately announced that the United States had ruled out sending troops to Ukraine.
Americans don't want to see U.S. troops get involved in another country's struggles, and "this is Europe's difficulty," Burgess added, but he doesn't get why Biden would "give up any tactical advantage from the fact that he could send troops in."
"I don't understand quite why he was so quick to get up there and say, First off, we're never going to do anything to help on the ground," he continued. "That may be true, and that may be exactly where I am as well, but don't give that up at the very beginning."
The congressman also discussed the ongoing confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, including questions from Republicans, including Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, about her work as a public defender, whose cases included those of Guantanamo Bay detainees, and about her time on the bench and the sentences she'd given to child pornography offenders.
"Sen. Blackburn's questions were entirely appropriate," said Burgess. "Not being in the Senate, I am basically getting my news about this from the same as any other American. The senators do have the availability of additional information.
"But I can't help them think back to the days when Janice Rogers Brown was nominated by [the-President] George W. Bush to the D.C. circuit court, which was seen as a sort of a preamble to her being appointed to the Supreme Court," said Burgess, adding that Biden, who was then a senator, "would not let her name come up for a vote, and that was wrong then."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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