‘A lot of mental leaps’: Watch Lee Zeldin correct CNN anchor in real time as she tries gotcha question on climate

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin shut down CNN host Kasie Hunt Sunday on “State of the Union,” saying the pictures Hunt displayed in her opening had “nothing to do” with a major Trump administration climate policy announcement.

The EPA on Tuesday announced it would formally end the 2009 Obama-era Endangerment Finding, which allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. In Hunt’s opening monologue before bringing on Zeldin, the CNN host criticized the EPA’s new change while images of power plants with smoke billowing into the sky played in the background, prompting Zeldin to correct her.

Hunt asked if Zeldin accepted the “overwhelming scientific consensus that these greenhouse gas emissions are the biggest drivers of man-made climate change.”

“Well, it’s great to be on with you. First, it’s worth pointing out that all eight or so images that you just posted on the screen have nothing to do with this week’s announcement,” Zeldin responded. “What the 2009 endangerment finding had to do with was with regards to mobile sources vehicles.”

“This week’s proposal to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding was with regards to mobile sources vehicles. CNN’s been using a lot of photos where they show smokestacks of stationary sources like power plants. That’s not what we proposed,” Zeldin continued. “Now going back to 2009, the science that they were reviewing included both optimistic to pessimistic scenarios. To reach the 2009 endangerment finding, they relied on the most pessimistic views of the science.”

In a public response to the agency’s decision to roll back the Endangerment Finding, Zeldin told the hosts of the “Ruthless” podcast that the regulation is not only costly for Americans, but has also been used to impose strict rules on vehicles. Without it, consumers could see more freedom of choice and potentially lower costs.

WATCH:

Zeldin went on to state that “a lot” of the assumed “pessimistic views of the science in 2009” did not end up “panning out,” pointing to how the EPA can now ultimately “rely on 2025 facts as opposed to 2009 bad assumptions.”

“The other thing too is that at EPA, we don’t just get to creatively make the law whatever we want it to be,” Zeldin added. “The Supreme Court ruled in Loper Bright overturning the Chevron doctrine in West Virginia versus EPA, Michigan versus EPA, that agencies like the EPA can’t just use vague language in statute and try to make it be whatever we want it to be. The major policy doctrine also says that when you’re going to reach something like an endangerment finding and then have trillions of dollars of regulation, that’s something that should be decided by our elected members of Congress in passing statute.”

“If you don’t mind, the 2009 endangerment finding, while it’s simply summed up now as saying carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare, that’s not what they did back in 2009. They had a lot of mental leaps. They say carbon dioxide, when mixed with a whole bunch of other well-mixed gases, in some cases not even emitted from mobile sources, they say that that contributes to global climate change. It doesn’t say causes, contributes. How much? They don’t say, but it’s north of zero, not much more than zero.”

Talks of rolling back the 2009 Endangerment Finding began in March and were discussed with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other federal agencies. By June 30, the EPA had formally submitted its request to OMB regarding the regulation.

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