Fox News turns Winter Storm Uri into a cudgel to own the libs – By Aaron Rupar (VOX) / Feb 17 2021
“It seems pretty clear that a reckless reliance on windmills is the cause of this disaster” in Texas, Tucker Carlson lied.
As nearly 3 million Texans languished without electricity Wednesday afternoon amid the ongoing fallout from Winter Storm Uri, Republicans and Fox News have teamed up to turn the disaster into a culture-war wedge issue.
As Vox’s Umair Irfan explained, the blackouts happened when the winter storm created a sudden spike in energy demand and hamstrung production of natural gas, coal, nuclear, and wind energy. The root problems (climate change aside) involve the state’s failure to winterize energy facilities and infrastructure in a region not accustomed to sustained freezing weather.
It’s a somewhat complicated story — unless you get your information from Fox News. Since Monday, various Fox News hosts, including Tucker Carlson and Harris Faulkner, have pushed the narrative that the power outages in Texas are actually the result of Green New Deal-style energy policies that aren’t even in place there.
“It seems pretty clear that a reckless reliance on windmills is the cause of this disaster,” Carlson claimed Monday, establishing a talking point that Fox News continued to hammer into the brains of viewers across numerous shows on Tuesday, with Carlson returning to the theme that evening.
“totally reliant on windmills” pic.twitter.com/xIfQPg0IlB
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 17, 2021
