Chris Hayes slams Fox’s ‘culture war idiocy’ over Texas power outage



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MSNBC host Chris Hayes slammed Fox News and the right-wing media for wrongly blaming wind turbines as the root cause of the debilitating power outages in Texas, accusing “these charlatans” of pushing “on Tuesday. the idiocy of painful culture war “for the purpose of properly demonizing energy.

As much of Texas is plunged into darkness as historic winter storms rage, demand for electricity has skyrocketed and right-wing media have blamed the lion’s share of the blame on wind farms across the country. ‘State. Referring to images of frozen wind turbines, Fox News linked Joe Biden’s push for green power to the disaster in Texas, even though the state gets the vast majority of its energy from fossil fuels.

Kicking off his prime-time MSNBC program recapping the devastation in the Lone Star State, Hayes noted that more than four million Texans were stranded without power in freezing temperatures on Tuesday.

He then turned his attention to those who sought to exploit the issue for political gain.

“It’s a horrible situation. It is driven by a complex confluence of factors, ranging from extreme weather conditions to an electrical infrastructure that has unfortunately been underdeveloped, to the peculiarities of the aggressively deregulated and independent power market in Texas, ”he noted.

“But, of course Fox News and other Republicans saw some kind of pain, some kind of problem somewhere and immediately – without missing a beat – right away tried to turn it into a culture war, in this case against those damn hippie liberals and their clean energy, ”added progressive host MSNBC.

Playing a montage of Fox stars attributing only the deadly failures to windmills while claiming that wind power does not operate in subzero temperatures, Hayes pointed out how utterly insane these claims were.

“Imagine how stupid you would have to think your audience is, the contempt you have for holding them back, looking at the camera and trying to sell it on the idea that windmills don’t work when it’s done. cold, ”he exclaimed. “After Texas, Iowa is the state with the most wind power in the country. If you’ve ever been to Iowa in the winter, I can tell you from personal experience it’s pretty cold in Iowa.

Adding that Denmark, a country with very cold winters, receives half of its power from the wind, the All in The host then quoted the senior director of the Texas Electric Reliability Council, who said earlier Tuesday that ice causing some wind turbines to shut down was the “least significant factor” of power outages in Texas.

“It’s just a lie that wind turbines, green power, are the root causes of the problems in Texas right now,” said Hayes, comparing the claim to the “big lie” that the election was ” stolen “to former President Donald Trump. .

“Let’s be clear, this is probably as big a lie as any other about elections because energy and how we produce it is the biggest problem this country will face in the medium term,” a- he continued.

Observing that power grids are “complicated” and “dark stuff,” Hayes said that every once in a while a catastrophe occurs that reminds us that the grid is “the foundation of modern civilization – and it is also the key to overcoming climate change ”.

“Republicans and right-wing media, they want to take every political issue and turn it into painful cultural war nonsense,” Hayes said. “And there is an interest in doing so. Fossil fuel companies want it too. They want to turn into a culture war, like the libs don’t want you to have the power.

While saying that there is no reason why we cannot “create a modern energy infrastructure that is more resilient to climate change and also less expensive and that serves people better”, Hayes concluded that “the most big obstacle will be these charlatans who will seize all the opportunities. lying to people for profit and for power. “

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