Senior U.S. officials traveled to Venezuela this weekend to discuss the possibility of easing sanctions on Nicolás Maduro’s communist regime if the key Putin ally would export energy to the U.S.

And Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has said that buying oil from Iran is “on the table.”

The United States must stop buying Russian energy, but the Biden Administration should increase U.S. energy production - not replace one dictator’s exports with another.

The Biden Administration’s policies on energy have been short-sighted and counterintuitive.  By shutting down the Keystone XL Pipeline on his first day in office, President Biden reversed course on the energy independence that President Trump achieved.  As a result, President Biden is faced with a bad option and a worse option: put cash in the pockets of a vicious mad man in Eastern Europe, or put cash in the pockets of vicious mad men in the Middle East and South America.

If the Biden Administration wants to stand up to our adversaries, they need to reverse their energy policies.