Didn’t Congress impeach Joe Biden’s predecessor for flexing presidential foreign-policy muscle to influence an American election? Because this sounds pretty familiar, all the way down to the rejection of a nominal ally to play along. After Joe Biden and the White House accused Saudi Arabia of taking Russia’s side by pursuing a significant production cut, Riyadh fired back, accusing Biden of failing to oppose the cut — and just asking for a delay.

A very convenient delay:

The White House pushed for Riyadh to use its weight in OPEC+ to delay a production cut for one month (after the US midterm elections, in which the Democrats are facing stiff challenges), according to this press release by the Saudi MFA. https://t.co/47OxJCka2u

— Alison Tahmizian Meuse (@AliTahmizian) October 13, 2022

Here’s the money shot, emphasis mine:

The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would also like to clarify that based on its belief in the importance of dialogue and exchange of views with its allies and partners outside the OPEC+ group regarding the situation in the oil markets, the Government of the Kingdom clarified through its continuous consultation with the US Administration that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences.

That’s a different narrative than the White House has run since the OPEC+ announcement. They made it sound as though Biden opposed the cuts altogether, and that the cuts were a betrayal of their understanding of the agreements in the Biden-bin Salman fist-bump meeting in July. Democrats responded to that by proposing a silly and impotent NOPEC Act and threatening to cut off arms sales to the Sunni nation that leads the coalition trying to keep Iran contained.

Not long afterward, White House spokesman John Kirby admitted that Biden hadn’t opposed the cuts, but just wanted them put off until the next OPEC+ meeting. You know … the one after the midterm elections:

The Biden administration admitted Thursday it had asked Saudi Arabia to delay the OPEC+ vote to cut oil production until the cartel’s next meeting – after the midterm elections.

“We presented Saudi Arabia with analysis to show that there was no market basis to cut production targets, and that they could easily wait for the next OPEC meeting to see how things developed,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

The Riyadh-led group of oil producers’ next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 4, according to the OPEC website.

Kirby also alleged that other OPEC member nations “communicated to us privately that they also disagreed with the Saudi decision, but felt coerced to support Saudi’s direction.”

Hoo boy. Biden lied about this from the start, apparently hoping that the Saudis wouldn’t risk angering him further by revealing their actual negotiations. Biden set the precedent for humiliation, however, by having his team leak convenient (and largely unbelievable) claims to have personally rebuked bin Salman over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The meeting turned out to be so insulting even apart from that issue that the Saudis resolved to steer an independent course on energy policy, about which I’ll have more in a later post.

Democrats in Congress set an impeachment precedent over attempts to manipulate national elections via foreign-policy strongarming. This certainly appears to qualify — trying to rig the oil markets to improperly influence the midterms. Should Congress impeach Biden over this, especially with Kirby’s admission that Biden and the White House lied to them and everyone about what happened? I wasn’t a fan of the precedent in the first place, but … sauce for the gander seems fair enough.

As Duane Patterson notes in our  latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast today, it’s not even the first lie about that meeting. Our podcast features mainly other topics, though:

•  Have the Russians begun to look for an escape hatch in Ukraine? Duane Patterson and I discuss developments in Kherson, Luhansk, and Turkey.
• Inflation spiked upward in a new CPI report, and this time gas prices are no excuse.
• Joe Biden’s contretemps with the Saudis isn’t helping either, and the midterms will likely prove his undoing in all of these areas.
• I also reveal to Duane and our viewers/listeners the one thing that would convince me to move back to California, so don’t miss that!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!