OPINION
‘Loves to Read’: Why Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt is Praising ‘Ivy League Trained’ Ron DeSantis’ Climate Change Denialism
Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt is praising Ron DeSantis’ climate change denialism after the Florida Republican governor and trailing 2024 presidential candidate sat down with her fellow Fox News host, former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for an interview that aired on the right-wing cable channel’s “Outnumbered” show Wednesday.
“President Biden also said when standing here in the state of Florida, ‘nobody intelligent can deny the impact of climate crises,'” McEnany told DeSantis, amid news reports Wednesday that over “80 million Americans are under heat alerts as temperatures soar toward record highs across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.”
The Florida governor in his Fox News interview accused President Joe Biden of “trying to politicize the weather.”
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In the highly-edited clip that aired on Fox News (below), DeSantis said, “I study history, and they act like this is somehow unprecedented. It’s not. this area, the big bend, got hit by a storm, almost the exact same track, in 1896, that had 125 mile per hour winds.”
“So the idea that we’ve not had powerful storms until recently, that’s just not factually true. And so when they, that’s the first thing they want to say, you have to ask, why are you trying to politicize the weather?”
After the clip ran, Earhardt commented on McEnany’s interview with DeSantis.
“Alright, so that’s a little taste of it, and he’s saying, ‘I’ve studied this,’ and I believe it because he is Ivy League trained and he is such a – he loves to read.”
Earlier this year, NPR reported on a “sweeping new report by top climate scientists and meteorologists” that “describes how climate change drove unprecedented heat waves, floods and droughts in recent years. The annual report from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) compiles the leading science about the role of climate change in extreme weather.”
Last week MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described DeSantis’ position on climate change as “essentially vaccine denialism at a civilizational scale.”
Watch the Fox News clip below or at this link.
DeSantis on Biden linking climate change with severe storms: “Why are you trying to politicize the weather?” pic.twitter.com/dTtt0TrQzq
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2023
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