On Monday, all four co-hosts on ABC’s The View eagerly mocked Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) for appearing on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week with a snowball to illustrate his skepticism surrounding climate change.
Conservative co-host Nicolle Wallace slammed Inhofe’s stunt and proclaimed that it's “moronic to throw snow in the Capitol and say I don't know, I don't think anything is changing.”
The segment began with Rosie Perez bashing Inhofe and insisting that “[w]hat was very upsetting to me is that a man of his stature, a man of his age, doesn't understand what climate change really means.”
Fill-in host Padma Lakshmi went even further and insisted that “[t]he only thing that snowball illustrated was his own lack of knowledge and stupidity." True to form, Nicolle Wallace joined in on the anti-Inhofe discussion by comparing the Oklahoma Republican to her 3-year old:
What bothered me was that a man of his age and a man of his stature was throwing stuff inside that chamber. My 3-year-old throws snow in the house and I'm like put that down
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It is perfectly fine to say that as a party we're not going to hamstring our economy to do something here in America unless we require India and China and every country on the planet do the same thing. That's fine. That's good politics, that’s good policy. But it is moronic to throw snow in the Capitol and say I don't know, I don't think anything is changing.
Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t the first time that ABC chose to mock Senator Inhofe for bringing a snowball to the Senate. During a news brief on Good Morning America on Friday, February 27, co-host Amy Robach hit the Republican for a “bizarre scene in Washington. One senator used the recent snow to bolster his argument about climate change.”
See relevant transcript below.
ABC’s The View
March 2, 2015
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Hey, you know the other day Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe brought a prop to the Senate floor in an effort to refute climate change. Take a look.
JIM INHOFE: In case we have forgotten because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, do you know what this is? It's a snowball and that’s just from outside here. So it's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable. So Mr. President, catch this.
PADMA LAKSHMI: What is the point?
ROSIE PEREZ: What was very upsetting to me is that a man of his stature, a man of his age, doesn't understand what climate change really means. And the reason why we're having so much more snowfall right now is that the polar vortex, everyone heard [of] the polar vortex, that's the whirlwind that seals around the North Pole that keeps it cold. Because of climate change and the change in the stratosphere, the ozone layer, that circle has been broken and that’s where you get, it dips and a cold jet stream comes shooting down the northeast Canada and southeast coast and that's why we're getting so much snow and that's why other regions are getting hotter.
Because it affects the world, not just the United States. The United States is only two percent of the land on planet Earth, so it was just very disconcerting to me. That said, I do believe in climate change but I also believe that we need a lot more years to study this to make a concrete decision. But there is something happening and if we can make a change, we should do something about it.
NICOLLE WALLACE: What bothered me was that a man of his age and a man of his stature was throwing stuff inside that chamber. My 3-year-old throws snow in the house and I'm like put that down. But I don't know where you have to live to think that the weather isn’t changing. Yesterday was March 1. It took me four hours and we went Donner party at the Wallace family last night. Four hours in a car with my 3-year-old, two dogs, my mother and my husband, so figure that out, guys. Where do you live that the weather isn't all screwed up? Where do you live that you can't tell that we're having historic floods.
He's in Oklahoma. Maybe it’s just always cold and always hot. But the weather’s changing. And let me say on the politics of this, it's terrible for the Republican Party to look like we can't acknowledge reality. It is perfectly fine to say that as a party we're not going to hamstring our economy to do something here in America unless we require India and China and every country on the planet do the same thing. That's fine. That's good politics, that’s good policy. But it is moronic to throw snow in the Capitol and say I don't know, I don't think anything is changing.
LAKSHMI: The only thing that snowball illustrated was his own lack of knowledge and stupidity. Didn't he write a book about the subject?
GOLDBERG: I'm not a fan so I don't know.
WALLACE: He wrote a book and there are people that agree with him. But just the politics, if we want to get people younger than him to join our party I think it's time to stop denying and just say let's debate the solutions, not whether or not it's changing. Where do you live that it isn't crazy weather?
