On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about the Democrats’ performance at the recent CNN climate change town hall and pulls up some of the funniest moments. Video and partial transcript below:
Not just Biden, but other candidates too, demonstrated my favorite aspect of the whole debate, which was the rank hypocrisy of the whole thing. Biden [gets called out] by Anderson Cooper for preaching climate change on one night, [talking about] how urgent it is [and] how we need to stop it, and then attending a fossil fuel fundraiser the next night.
COOPER: There is a fundraiser tomorrow night, it’s given by a guy named Andrew Goldman. He does hedge funds and stuff, but he also has a company called Western LNG, and their biggest project, which I think was announced in 2018, is a floating liquefied facility for natural gas. It’s off the coast of British Columbia and it’s going to provide Canadian gas to parts of northern Asia. So what Andrew is saying is, if you’re going to a fundraiser that’s given in part by this guy who has a company that is pulling off natural gas, are you the right guy to go after this?
BIDEN: Well I didn’t realize he does that.
Classic Biden answer. I assume Biden doesn’t really care [that he’s] getting money from the fossil fuel industry. But in his defense, he is losing his marbles and he may well have not realized that the guy does that.
Another area you see this hypocrisy last night — it’s not just the kind of would-be moderate Joe, it’s even in one of the most openly radical candidates, Julian Castro. He gets called out [through an audience question] for completely changing his mind on climate change when it suits him.
SILA: Experts warn that we only have eleven years to get off fossil fuels to have a safe, livable future. But as mayor of San Antonio, you welcomed the fracking boom. Why should we trust you as president to transition our economy to renewables given your past middle ground approach?
CASTRO: I appreciate the question from Sila, and you know I want to commend the Sunrise Movement as you know they’ve been pushing for a democratic climate debate which I hope happens. I’m glad that we’re having this conversation today.
So first of all, she’s right. When I was mayor of San Antonio I did believe that there were opportunities to be had in fracking that was going on in South Texas. The thing is that back then, which was almost a decade ago, we have been saying that natural gas was a bridge fuel, right. We’re coming to the end of the bridge.
Yeah, OK buddy. You said it because it was convenient, because you wanted the jobs and you wanted the money, because it was helpful to you then and now it’s not helpful to you. So you’re trying to come up with a bogus answer. When candidates thank someone for a question, and then spend like 20 seconds talking about how important it is to have that question in this conversation, you know that they got nothing. They ran out. So total hypocrisy, that’s fine.
I mean this [is] like Prince Harry … one day he says climate change is the most important issue in the world, no one can go on vacation anymore, and then you look and he flies on a private jet four times in eleven days. It’s just bogus. People don’t believe it, but they are hypocritically paying lip service to their false religion.
The funniest moment of the night came from Cory Booker. You forgot he was in the debate? Me too. You forgot that he’s running for president? Me too. But here is the single funniest moment of the night, when Cory Booker said that he will be president.
BOOKER: So my plan says that we need to be at a zero-carbon electric electricity by 2030. That’s ten years from the time that I will win the presidency of the United States of America.
Oh, it’s ten years from … 20-never. Okay, well then I’m not too worried about those 10 years.
There was another hilarious moment of the night when it came to plastic straws. Second funniest moment of the entire debate. I have to just get to Kamala Harris because she finally addressed the central climate issue. Forget fossil fuels, forget sacrificing our babies to the weather gods, the central issue: The plastic straws. She said we need to ban the plastic straws, she then admitted the paper straws are terrible. She then laughed nervously, which is her tell when you can tell she doesn’t want to answer a question.
BURNETT: Do you ban plastic straws?
HARRIS: I think we should, yes. I mean look, I’m going to be honest, it’s really difficult to drink out of a paper straw…Like if you don’t gulp it down immediately it starts to bend and then, you know, the little thing catches it and then you know. So we gotta kind of perfect that one a little bit more.
[Nervous laughter] Don’t make me please! I don’t know what I’m supposed to think!
She’s really bad. She’s such a bad candidate. She could’ve been so good, but she’s just really bad on stage. So funny though: Would you ban plastic straws? Yeah, sure. Doesn’t explain why. By the way, people don’t know this, the whole plastic straw thing was started by a nine-year-old boy … who came up with a completely baseless, evidence-less bogus number, that the U.S. uses 500 million plastic straws a day. The way he found that number was he just called a few companies and tried to put a number together like for a fourth-grade report, and then he put this out there and now leading Democratic candidates for president are touting it and we’re now not allowed to use our plastic straws. We now need to use those sippy cups, which use more plastic, which is almost certainly just as bad if not worse for the environment. Neither here nor there.
Big winner of the night: Liz Warren. I didn’t show any clips from her. Why? Because she played it safe. This is a big loser issue for the Democratic Party. The Democrats should not have agreed to this town hall. Climate change is a bad issue for them nationwide. It’s good with their most fervent supporters, it makes them look like absolute lunatics to the rest of the country — to the soft Left, the center, and obviously to the Right. Liz Warren knew that going in, she’s a really clever candidate. She played it really safe. So she doesn’t get any of these pull-out stupid moments.
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