Joe Biden attracted criticism from both progressives and Republicans after a report indicated the White House was planning a visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss global oil supply.

Axios reported on Sunday that Biden’s senior advisers were considering a spring trip to Saudi Arabia in an effort to improve relations and to propose a potential increase in oil exports.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, would not confirm those plans on Monday, although she noted that senior administration officials traveled to Saudi Arabia last month to “discuss a range of issues including the war in Yemen, including security in the region and certainly including energy security”.

“They had the discussion … it’s in everyone’s interest to reduce the impact on the global oil marketplace,” Psaki said.

The Axios report comes as the US and its western allies consider banning imports of Russian oil in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The White House had dismissed a ban, out of concern for how it would limit oil supply and further drive up gas prices which have already hit a 14-year US high.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/07/joe-biden-saudi-arabia-oil-supply-criticism

The one constant of the American reaction to the war in Ukraine so far has been bipartisanship.

Democratic and Republican politicians as distant politically as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) or Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) agree on not sending troops into Ukraine, refusing Ukrainian requests to police a no-fly zone there and banning Russian oil even if it raises prices for Americans.

A number of Republican lawmakers also have been giving Biden small doses of praise for how he’s handled sanctions, at least since the invasion began. Yet there are some Republicans trying to tease apart a relatively small aspect of Biden’s response — the United States’ reliance on Russian oil — to see if he could be politically vulnerable there.

“I think there’s broad support for the president in what he’s doing now,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week in a news conference. “Our biggest complaint is, what took him so long?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/07/why-biden-is-getting-some-praise-republicans-his-handling-ukraine/