Joy Reid calls out Laura Ingraham over Russia coverage: ‘Do they literally get their scripts from the Kremlin?’

The U.S. is stepping up sanctions against Russian oligarchs and banks that hold Russian money

MSNBC’s Joy Reid took to Twitter Thursday to respond to Laura Ingraham’s rant about the U.S.  sanctioning Russian oligarchs amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

As previously reported by White House Correspondent April Ryan, the U.S. is stepping up sanctions against Russian oligarchs and banks that hold Russian money in response to the conflict.

Other sanctions include cutting off exports to the country. The sanctions go beyond a singular person and extend to the targeted person and their families. 

During her Fox News Show Thursday night, Ingraham questioned Biden’s strategy of sanctioning Russian oligarchs, Mediaite reports. 

“Even if we could expeditiously freeze every oligarch’s luxury assets, would that really stop the suffering of the Ukrainian people that is happening right now?” said Ingraham in the Twitter clip above.

“Do we think Putin is going to wake up and say next week, he’s going to get up there and say you know that chalet in Gstaad was so important to me? I think I will call Zelensky and send the troops home,” she said in a mock Russian accent.

“No. More importantly, we have to ask, is there a possibility this could all backfire and make things even worse for Ukraine? Is anyone in the Biden administration even gaming any of this out? You wonder. Let’s be real,”  Ingraham added.

The news anchor continued to compare “chasing down oligarchs” to that of “swatting away mosquitoes when a cobra is about to strike your leg,” she concluded.

Ingraham went on to call China the “biggest threat” and noted that if the Biden administration really wants “to get at Putin’s funding source, why are they not clamping down on Chinese corporations and Xi’s inner circle.”

Ingraham’s segment went viral on social media with Reid sharing the clip on Twitter along with the caption: “Do they literally get their scripts from the Kremlin??”

Meanwhile, theGRIO previously reported that former President Barack Obama warned in a statement that there could be “economic consequences to sanctions, given Russia’s significant role in world energy markets,” according to The Hill.

“But that’s a price we would be willing to pay to take a stand on the side of freedom,” Obama continued. “For over the long term, we all face a choice, between a world in which might makes right and autocrats are free to impose their will through force, or a world in which free people everywhere have the power to determine their own future.”

The Russian military has reportedly seized a nuclear power plant in the city of Zaporizhzhia amid the raging war in the region, Deadline reports. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said that “it is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant.”

Adding, “Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,” the Embassy said.

This article contains additional reporting from theGrio’s White House Correspondent April Ryan.

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