Seriously, what is it with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s obsession with simping for Chinese communists just so he could “muh, get Trump?” Of course, he presents it the other way around: Trump is stupidly aiding the Chinese by being against "liberal" sources of energy. He’s doubling down on Beijing’s fake persona as the paragon of clean energy virtue to attack the green sludge subsidy cuts within President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
In Friedman’s latest unhinged screed July 3, “How Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Make China Great Again,” he began:
Can you hear it — that roar coming from the East? It’s the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese laughing at us.
The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable.
Trump not choosing to waste billions in U.S. tax dollars on climate hysteria hogwash was laughable. Then he spewed the one of the most brain-dead hot takes in lieu of the impending July 4 festivities, “It is exactly the opposite of what China is doing. Indeed, Beijing may have to make July 4 its own national holiday going forward: American Electricity Dependence Day.” Holy screaming banshees, where are the headache pills?
But what more can you expect from a guy who actually argued years ago that America should be “China for a Day” so it could finally accede to climate activists’ neurotic pipe dream fevers? After all, Friedman also has been repeatedly cited in Chinese Communist Party-controlled media like the China Daily and the Global Times as their obedient messenger for the communist state’s phony climate commitments.
Only his Great Brain has grasped it: "Few Americans understand how far ahead of us China already is in this realm and moving farther ahead, and faster, every day."
Channeling the ongoing Elon Musk vs. Trump feud, Friedman quipped, “That is why Musk and many others find it so 'insane and destructive' that Trump and his G.O.P. cult have rejected an energy policy of 'all of the above as clean as possible as fast as possible' — oil, natural gas, coal, wind, hydro, nuclear, solar, geothermal, hydrogen — that is always working to phase out the dirtiest for the cleanest, the way China often has.”
The way “China often has?” What carbon emissions is Friedman smoking? Carbon Brief just reported in February that China’s construction of coal-powered plants reached a 10-year high in 2024. Citing new research at the time, Carbon Brief summarized that “[t]he accelerated buildout, fuelled by investment from the coal-mining sector, ‘raises critical concerns’ about China’s ability to transition away from fossil fuel, the report warns.”
The Engineering News Record noted later in March that the spike in coal plant construction was preceded by “a major hike in coal mining permits mostly in major coal-producing provinces such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Gansu.” Oh, but in Friedman’s world, “in recent years [China’s energy] has been driven by expanding hydro, solar, wind and battery sources, which are easier, cheaper and quicker to build and also help the climate.”
However, on planet Earth, Energy Tracker Asia conceded in April that “[t]here are some worrying signs that coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel — remains king in China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.”
Friedman's statement in a previous pro-CCP column further emphasizes this dilemma, “Wait, wait, you say, but isn’t China also still digging coal? Yes, it is, but with a long-term plan to phase it out and to use robots to do the dangerous and health-sapping work of miners.” In other words, “In Beijing We Trust!” Does Friedman even really buy that?
The high probability is that the Chinese government is lying. Is Friedman therefore just engaging in blissful ignorance or willful propaganda? You decide.
The columnist belched that solar, wind and battery are “the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from A.I. data centers.” First, not even renewable advocates are this confident. Sourceability reasoned in a January 8 report that the AI data centers Friedman was gobsmackingly adamant would be addressed by renewables is causing vast problems in that very sector: “ [According to the International Energy Agency], power generation is currently the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions despite its massive attempts to transition to net zero emissions through the expansion of renewable energy sources.”
The skyrocketing electricity demand “is quickly eclipsing what today’s power industry can provide,” Sourceability continued. Not only that, but Friedman is also just flat-out wrong. Data Center Frontier published a report in March clearly recognizing natural gas as the preferred source of energy to meet the demand for emerging data centers:
With an extensive infrastructure of over 3 million miles of pipelines in the US, natural gas remains the preferred fuel source due to its reliable supply and low risk of disruption.
But Mustachio has only been trained to chirp the pro-China narrative, so it’s not a surprise that he didn’t bother to admit any of this.
