President Biden Says He Will Respond to Chemical Weapons "In Kind"

By 

Jordan Sekulow

|
March 25, 2022

6 min read

Foreign Policy

A

A

After a conference with the heads of state at NATO headquarters, President Biden was asked if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response by NATO.  President Biden responded:

It would trigger a response in-kind. Whether or not – you’re asking whether NATO would cross – we’d make that decision at the time.

If NATO actually uses chemical weapons against Russia, would this lead to World War III? White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tried to backpedal President Biden’s statement:

I will just say, with respect to any use of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical, biological – Russia would pay a severe price.

The mixed messaging coming out of the White House continues over this war between Russia and Ukraine. In the meantime, Congress is calling on the President to provide military aircraft to Ukraine. Senator James Lankford (OK) is leading the charge on this along with his colleagues and joined Sekulow to discuss how the United States can help Ukraine in this conflict:

We can do more. I think this whole escalation conversation is really based on a Russian propaganda piece. Remember that Putin said if you put sanctions on our country, that’s an act of war. If you provide any kind of resources to Ukraine, that is an act of war. That is something Putin just throws out over and over again. What he is trying to do is frighten the rest of the world into helping Ukrainians who just want to protect their own country. These are folks that are trying to protect their own country from a foreign invasion from a ruthless thug that has come across the border. . . . Let me just tell you . . . since 2014 we have had American troops on the ground in Ukraine training the Ukrainian military on how to be able to fight the Russians. We have provided them the resources. . . .  It is not unreasonable to also provide them aircraft. I go back to this basic biblical principle – when it is in your power to do good, do good. We have the ability to be able to help them protect their own nation by giving them access to these big fighters. 

The U.S. has taken steps to combat Russia’s aggression by placing sanctions on them. While President Biden’s Administration is claiming these sanctions were meant to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Biden claimed that sanctions were never meant as a deterrence method:

Let’s get something straight. You remember, if you’ve covered me from the beginning, I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter. . . . The maintenance of sanctions, the maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain and the demonstration why I asked for this NATO meeting today is to be sure that after a month we will sustain what we’re doing, not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.

However, this directly contradicts what his own White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in February when she spoke about the intentions of the sanctions when she said:

Sanctions can be a powerful tool. They have been in a lot of moments throughout history. And what we view them as – or how we’re viewing them as we’re starting high . . . in terms of the significance and the severity of the sanctions that were announced today – yes, our intention is to have a deterrent effect.

Many other Biden Administration officials had the same messaging as Psaki. ACLJ Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy and former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell pointed out this mixed messaging:

First of all, I can’t emphasize enough that only in Washington, D.C., in the press newsrooms are the people that are pretending what Joe Biden said is okay. The rest of us know that he has been contradicted by his own team and he’s been contradicted by the fact that Donald Trump deterred Putin with his sanctions – the Russian pipeline sanctions. . . . Joe Biden dropped those sanctions, the Senate Democrats voted to drop those sanctions and they said they were dropping the sanctions because they didn’t want to somehow embolden Putin. They were flat wrong. Deterrence works, we know that.

The Left not only removed sanctions on Putin’s pipeline, but they have reversed all of the policies that made the U.S. energy independent. And Americans around the world are paying the price for it. Ric Grenell detailed in his new article how California is experiencing the highest gas prices in the nation, he further explained why on Sekulow:

I’d say the first thing that they will learn is that the entire state of California is controlled by the Left and has gripped us into not supplying enough energy. We don’t participate in the explosion of liquid natural gas that the United States is able to participate in. We are not drilling. We’ve got a problem throughout California in that our beaches become filled with little oil pods because the reserves just off the beach are exploding and we are not tapping into them. This is mother nature trying to tell us that the oil needs to be pumped. Yet we don’t do it because the radical environmentalists are taking over California. Now what Governor Newsom is doing is he is going to bribe everybody with a $400 check and say well we are going to continue having this problem, but in order to appease you because you are all screaming about the high prices right, we are going to send you a $400 check while we are running for election. . . . I say take the money, deposit the check into your bank account and keep screaming about more supply.

We will continue to update you on this ongoing conflict.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the Biden Administration’s mixed messaging when it comes to the Russia/Ukraine conflict and California’s high gas prices. 

Support the work of the ACLJ, as we continue to bring you expert analysis on the issues that matter most.

Watch the full broadcast below.