Vice President Kamala Harris “needs” to support fracking as a weapon against Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to CNN political commentator Van Jones.
Harris has recently faced heavy criticism from Republicans including former President Donald Trump, her Republican presidential election opponent, for changing her position on fracking in the years since she ran as a candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
The Democratic presidential nominee called for a fracking ban as recently as late 2019 but says that she is now in favor of allowing the practice, which involves fracturing shale rock to help extract natural gas. Harris recently told CNN’s Dana Bash that she had come to believe that “clean energy” was achievable without a ban on fracking.
Jones, ex-adviser to former President Barack Obama, said during a CNN broadcast on Thursday night that it was “ludicrous” for Republicans to continue questioning the vice president’s stance on fracking without subjecting Trump and running mate JD Vance to the same scrutiny for “flip-flopping” on other issues like abortion rights.
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“[Republicans] get all upset about her changing her mind when Donald Trump has flip-flopped, even in the past couple weeks, on abortion,” Jones said. “JD Vance used to call Trump a ‘Hitler’ … So, here’s what happens in politics: People do change.”
The former Obama adviser went on to say that the support of fracking was a critical stance for Harris, and one that she would not reverse, because it allows the U.S. government to counteract Putin’s threats of cutting off European natural-gas supplies amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“Kamala Harris needs fracking,” Jones said. The idea that she spent four years doing nothing to stop fracking [and] she would stop it now is literally ludicrous. Why does she need it? Fracking is giving us a geopolitical weapon against Putin.”
Jones explained that the U.S. had been able to “hold the European coalition together” during the Russia-Ukraine war due to fracking, pointing out that Putin threatened to “cut gas off to Europe” if European nations backed Ukraine.
“We said, ‘No you’re not,'” Jones added. “You know why? We are now the biggest exporter of natural gas in the world. We sent liquid natural gas to Ukraine. And where did it come from? It came from fracking in Pennsylvania. So, Pennsylvania fracking is key to our geopolitical strategy.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said the following in a statement to Newsweek: “Van Jones has no idea what he’s talking about and he should stop playing politics because his track record is terrible. To think that Kamala is playing some 4D foreign policy chess is ridiculous.”
“When she met with Putin, just days later the war in Ukraine started,” he added. “She and [President Joe] Biden are directly responsible for one of the most embarrassing and disastrous blunders in American history with the pullout of Afghanistan that led to 13 unnecessary deaths of U.S. service members.”
Despite Cheung and Trump himself claiming that a meeting took place between Harris and Putin days before the war started in Ukraine, no such meeting occurred, according to FactCheck.Org. The vice president instead met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In 2021, during the administration of Biden and Harris, 13 U.S. service members were killed in a suicide bombing amid the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, Trump’s negotiations with the Taliban during the previous year set the stage for the withdrawal.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Harris campaign via email on Thursday night.
Jones also said on Thursday that Harris and other Democrats had fallen silent on fracking during the Biden administration because the “entire” party’s position on the practice had changed due to the situation in Europe and was unlikely to change again soon.
“For four years, she didn’t do anything against fracking, why?” he said. “The entire Democratic Party shut up about fracking? Why? Not for this election, but because that’s how we’re gonna beat Putin.”