Early Thursday morning, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin noticed that CNN climate correspondent spread fake news the previous evening on The Source with Kaitlan Collins when he accused the administration of being in such a hurry to repeal regulations they incompetently put out press releases with typos and placeholders in the headlines. In reality, Weir couldn’t tell the difference between zeroes and the letter O.
Collins began by putting the ball on the tee, “And Bill, as we're looking at these rollbacks that have been put in place by the White House, in just the last two hours alone or so, so far. What can you tell us about just the scope? What does this mean, and how is it going to affect people?”
Weir began, “It is the chainsaw effect that we've been watching all these weeks. Famously, President Trump promised oil executives carte blanche when it came to deregulation. And today's event, which is actually timed to the biggest energy conference in Houston today. Lee Zeldin put out a video on X, and they were putting out press releases with such a flurry, about 31 different actions and rollbacks that some of them had typos or placeholders at the top. We have one of those there.”
CNN then put up a headline of an EPA press release that read, “Trump EPA Announces OOOO b/c Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Rules Strangling Energy Producers.”
That’s a real regulation, but Weir claimed it was just a typo, “Trump EPA announces 000 -- you can see there. It's sort of shoot first, fill out the press release later.”
As Weir was spreading fake news, Collins muttered, “Oops,” in agreement.
Despite his mistake, Weir portrayed himself and his fellow climate alarmists as victims in a war against expertise:
They're going after, of course, as you mentioned, vehicle emissions, tailpipe emissions, power plant pollution, mercury pollution that comes out of there, coal, wastewater, oil and gas, coal ash. Reporting CO2, industries just kind of keeping a tally on how much planet-cooking pollution they're putting into the sea and sky, where they no need to do that anymore. Now, a lot of this is symbolic. It still has to go through the courts. It has to go through Congress. But it just is the latest in an all-out war on science, around public health, around the environment, and, of course, around the climate crisis.
Since The Source, Weir has reappeared on CNN multiple times to repeat his denunciations of Zeldin’s deregulation efforts, and while he has refrained from repeating the typo fake news, he hasn’t apologized either. So much for "facts first."
Here is a transcript for the March 12 show:
CNN The Source with Kaitlan Collins
3/12/2025
9:57 PM ET
KAITLAN COLLINS: And Bill, as we're looking at these rollbacks that have been put in place by the White House, in just the last two hours alone or so, so far. What can you tell us about just the scope? What does this mean, and how is it going to affect people?
BILL WEIR: It is the chainsaw effect that we've been watching all these weeks. Famously, President Trump promised oil executives carte blanche when it came to deregulation. And today's event, which is actually timed to the biggest energy conference in Houston today. Lee Zeldin put out a video on X, and they were putting out press releases with such a flurry, about 31 different actions and rollbacks that some of them had typos or placeholders at the top. We have one of those there. Trump EPA announces 000 -- you can see there.
COLLINS: Oops.
WEIR: It's sort of shoot first, fill out the press release later.
They're going after, of course, as you mentioned, vehicle emissions, tailpipe emissions, power plant pollution, mercury pollution that comes out of there, coal, wastewater, oil and gas, coal ash. Reporting CO2, industries just kind of keeping a tally on how much planet-cooking pollution they're putting into the sea and sky, where they no need to do that anymore.
Now, a lot of this is symbolic. It still has to go through the courts. It has to go through Congress. But it just is the latest in an all-out war on science, around public health, around the environment, and, of course, around the climate crisis.
