Zakaria Asks Koch Brothers Funded Global Warming Flipflopper 'Have They Asked for Their Money Back?'

UC Berkeley professor Richard Muller has become a media darling now that he believes in global warming as a result of a study he led on the subject funded by the Koch brothers.

With this in mind, CNN's Fareed Zakaria must have been shocked by what Muller told him Sunday after he asked his guest, "Were [the Kochs] disappointed by the results of your research or have they asked for their money back?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: Your funding, some of your funding came from the Koch brothers who are famously anti-global warming, or believe that it isn’t happening. How did that play out? Did, were they disappointed by the results of your research or have they asked for their money back?

Zakaria must have thought he had asked his guest the perfect loaded question. As it turned out, he was shooting blanks:

RICHARD MULLER, UC BERKELEY: [Laughs] I actually find it amusing how many people think they know what the Koch brothers are thinking. It’s a caricature of these people who I did speak with them, and they made it clear to me from the very beginning that they recognize that there were serious issues raised about prior estimates of global warming: everything from urban heat islands to data selection bias to other things. And they knew that I wanted to look into that, and our team would do a good unbiased job, and all they were asking for was scientific objectivity. So, I was very pleased with their fundings. I really sense they wanted to have this problem solved, and they never gave me any suggestion, any hint of a suggestion about which side they were hoping we’d come out on.

As readers likely know, Muller's "unbiased" research has been largely discredited by climate realists around the world.

Not surprisingly, Zakaria didn't address any of the scientific criticism his guest has gotten and instead gave the professor another chance to bash his benefactors:

ZAKARIA: And you haven’t heard from them since you’ve gone public on these issues.

MULLER: Oh, actually I’ve talked, I talked to them and they, they appear to be very pleased.

That clearly wasn't what the Koch-hating Zakaria was fishing for.