Fox Business' Stuart Varney on the “extremist” Green New Deal: “Don't people see this as economic nonsense?”
Guest Chris Bedford: “That's real demagoguery right there.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the February 12 edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co.:
STUART VARNEY (HOST): All right Chris, I say they're in abject disarray. Where am I going wrong?
CHRIS BEDFORD (DAILY CALLER EDITOR): I agree with you, and it was kind of predictable. When President Barack Obama helped put together this modern Democratic party that brought it so much further to the left, he did so with a force of character, with a charisma, the man was a very natural leader who was able to make everyone, whether you're a conservative or liberal, at some point feel like he might be speaking to you. And he brought together all these disparate groups, identity politics that had been really split, and said I'm your leader together. Now who do they have? They've got Chuck Schumer, they've got Nancy Pelosi, and they've got the rising populism that you've seen in the GOP coming up in the ranks with [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez. And this green deal, it's so embarrassing that Ocasio-Cortez's office said that it was a mistake. It wasn't even ready to go out yet, but it was too late. As you said, Democratic presidential candidates, they'd already signed on, because they just wanted to sign on to the cool new thing.
VARNEY: From here on out every presidential candidate is going to be asked their opinion of the Green New Deal. And if they express any support for it, any aspect of it, I think they've got a real problem. I just don't see this country voting for that kind of extremist measure. How about you?
BEDFORD: The amount of questions -- the amount of questions you could ask these people who might support it. Well, what do you have to say to the people of Hawaii. How are they going to get to the United States if air travel is over? When -- it actually says in the Green New Deal, don't worry about how much it costs. All we have to consider is what to do with our new-found prosperity. I mean that's real demagoguery right there.
VARNEY: But don't people see this as economic nonsense? The idea that the Federal Reserve can just issue credit, print money, for trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of new government programs, doesn't anybody want to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute what are we recommending here? Where is the reality check? I haven't seen it yet.
BEDFORD: These people have continuously compared it to World War II and the fight against fascism, or the fight against communism. And they say why would we even ask how much it costs? What's important is saving humanity. But there's a problem with that, because if a lot of these folks who are so concerned about carbon emissions were concerned about saving humanity, they'd be looking at things like nuclear energy. But we don't see that at all, because it doesn't fit into their mantra, which is more just this green energy they've created. There are other technologies that currently exist to lower carbon. But that's not what they want. They want control. It's a weird mixture of this rise in socialism and this John Lennon 'you may say I'm a dreamer' kind of stuff.
Previously:
Hugh Hewitt: The Green New Deal “is communism, it is fascism, it is despotism”