Fox News and Texas Governor Greg Abbott are getting slammed for falsely linking Democrats to the devastating and dangerous power outages in Texas. This has been a major theme at Fox News over the last couple of days.
look at these liars pic.twitter.com/jEYMl2T9Mm
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) February 16, 2021
According to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, “Republicans and right-wing media want to take every policy issue and turn it into some painful culture war idiocy … about how ‘the libs don’t want you to have power… It is just a lie that wind turbines, green energy are the root causes of the problems in Texas right now.”
Fox News and the Republican Party have created an alternative reality where the dysfunction people are currently enduring in Texas is somehow the fault of the Green New Deal. It's really nuts. And doesn't Abbott have better things to do right now than go on Hannity? https://t.co/AQlUe2ZWJ8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 17, 2021
Abbott is warning about the future threat of the Green New Deal — despite the reality that the massive power failure occurred under his watch, with no such legislation in place. More directly, Abbott’s math about the current grid’s limits does not add up. Though the claim that wind turbines shut down by the cold caused the outage has been repeated frequently on the right this week, it is primarily the weather-related failure of the state’s natural gas infrastructure that has resulted in the crisis, as pipelines froze in the season in which they are most heavily relied upon.
MSNBC’s Willie Geist points out how this isn’t only wrong, but also just unimaginable to lie like this while so many people are suffering (watch above), “What a strange instinct, people dying in the state of Texas because they don’t have any power, any heat, to rush on to Hannity and blame a Congresswoman from New York for the Green New Deal which doesn’t exist. The governor of that state, not pundit or radio show host. Governor of the state, who theoretically is managing the crisis, rushes out to blame somebody else.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to Abbott’s false claims saying the Green New Deal would actually help in future crises such as this.
Weak on sweeping next-gen public infrastructure investments, little focus on equity so communities are left behind, climate deniers in leadership so they don’t long prep for disaster.
We need to help people *now.* Long-term we must realize these are the consequences of inaction.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 17, 2021
Hayes adds that this shouldn’t be brushed aside, but that the misinformation Abbott and Fox News are spreading is “probably as consequential a lie as any about the election because energy and how we produce it is the single biggest issue this country will face in the medium term.”
So right wing media is telling people that Texas, the state that hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in 26 years, runs completely on wind? pic.twitter.com/K6vUaIyRBa
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) February 17, 2021
And for the record, Abbott isn’t just contradicting reality, he’s contradicting himself.
These two statements barely 24 hours apart pic.twitter.com/Eu9Swz6Wxd
— Brian Kahn (@blkahn) February 17, 2021