On the famed Jan. 6, President-elect Donald Trump noted sitting President Joe Biden is making the transition of power "really difficult" by issuing an offshore drilling ban to preempt Trump's agenda on energy, one that might be difficult to unwind.
"It'll be changed on day one," Trump vowed just hours after Biden's announcement, speaking on "The Hugh Hewitt Show" on Monday morning. "I can change it immediately.
"Now, they’ll do everything they can to make it as difficult as possible."
Biden signed an executive order to ban new offshore oil and gas development along most U.S. coastlines, a decision that Trump might find difficult to reverse without help from a narrowly divided Congress, according to Reuters and The Associated Press.
So much for a smooth transition of power, Trump lamented, pointing to Biden's lipservice to letting his incoming administration get set up for quick reforms to what the Biden administration agenda did to unwind the first Trump administration.
"You know, they talk about a transition; they're always saying, 'Oh, no, we want to have a smooth transition from party to party, for, you know, of government' — well, they're making it really difficult.
"They're throwing everything they can in the way. They're giving out trillions of dollars in nonsense and Green New Deal crap that isn't worth a damn thing; in fact, it's a negative for the country, not a positive."
Biden had announced a series of packages for Ukraine that has totaled around $6 billion on weapons and Treasury aid, too, Trump warned.
"And they're giving out money at levels that nobody's ever seen just to get the money," Trump said. "They're throwing it at people. They're throwing it at people that don’t even want it."
Trump's appearance came hours after the Biden Jan. 6 announcement.
"I see it just came over that Biden has banned all oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory. It's ridiculous," Trump told Hewitt. "I'll unban it immediately. I will unban it. I have the right to unban it immediately.
"What's he doing? Why is he doing it? You know, we have something that nobody else has. I mean, nobody has to the extent we have it, and it'll be more by the time we're finished, because I'll be able to expand. You know, we're going to expand our country. And it'll be more.
"We have oil and gas. And whether you manufacture widgets or gidgets, or whatever you happen to be doing, some countries have to work very hard to do that. We do, too, and we will, but we have oil and gas at a level that nobody else has. And we’re going to take advantage of it. And when I see somebody saying he’s going to ban 625 million acres, he doesn't know what that is.
"He doesn’t even know what 625 million acres would look like, and we can’t let that happen to our country. It's our greatest — it's really our greatest economic asset. And we're not going to let that happen to our country. We’re going to be great again."
Anti-American and anti-growth, globalist climate policies from progressives in the Democratic Party are going to cost them elections, as they did this past November, Trump concluded.
"They're going to lose a lot of elections if they keep this going," he said. "But you're giving up the biggest assets that we have.
"I mean, all of that, if you ever look at it on a map, what 625 million acres is, he's giving this all up? What is he doing?"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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