David Frum

There are just so many points where Democrats could make this case.

For example, in 2022, when Russia escalated its war against Ukraine, Russia is one of the world's largest energy producers in the world.

Russia and Ukraine are the largest food producers in the world.

They created a huge shock to energy and food markets.

I wrote about this a lot at the time of the Atlantic.

And through an amazing success of coordinated response between the United States, Europe, Japan and other friends, that challenge was blunted.

And what the Russians hoped would be an economic disaster did not turn into one.

But one of the means used was that President Biden authorized the largest release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in American history.

And that was a good call.

That was the right thing to do in 2022.

But in 2024 and 2025, with these amazing low fuel prices that President Trump kept bragging about, that was the time to go refill.

And he didn't do it.

He didn't do it.

And so we need to do more releases.

But had it been topped up in 2025, the United States would be in a much better position.

So there is a national security argument always against this administration, which is – and by the way –

One of the things that you would want to top up is some aid for Ukraine, because Trump keeps saying that the reason there aren't enough weapons, apparently, is that so many were given away to Ukraine.

Well, he was selling weapons in 2025, not giving anything and not again, not stockpiling.

He had a year and a half.

Why didn't he stockpile?