State Dept briefing gets heated as reporter asks if Biden admin taking credit for Trump accomplishme

An Associated Press reported took State Department spokesman Ned Price to task Monday for suggesting that President Joe Biden was responsible for a policy that had started under the Trump administration.

Price, highlighting a report sent to Congress, said some 18 entities have engaged in "good faith efforts" to scale back their involvement in Nord Stream 2, a controversial $11 billion pipeline project designed to transmit Russian natural gas to Germany.

Kremlin critics have said the project would double the amount of natural gas imported from Russia. If completed, it would leave Europe more dependent on Russian energy than ever before. The poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has revitalized calls for the project to be abandoned.

At Monday’s press conference, Price seemed to suggest that the Biden administration’s efforts. That the aforementioned entities have wound down their activities in the pipeline project, Price said, demonstrated that Biden and Congress’s strategy "has been working to good effect."

Associated Press reporter Matt Lee piped in, telling Price that all of this work had begun under the Trump administration.

"You guys have only been in office for a month, right? Are you telling me that in the last four weeks these 18 companies all of the sudden decided to say, ‘Oh my God! We better not doing anything with Nord Stream 2," Lee said. "You guys are taking credit for stuff the previous administration did. Yes or no?"

State Dept briefing gets heated as reporter asks if Biden admin taking credit for Trump accomplishments