On Monday morning, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings informally added Chris Wright and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr — whom President-Elect Trump nominated to become Energy secretary and chair of the FCC, respectively — to the list of appointments they’re melting down over, fearing the former’s promise to unleash American potential on energy production and the latter’s long-standing crusade against bias.
ABC put Biden-Harris apple polisher Mary Bruce on the case, so she naturally had only mean things to say.
She made sure to point out Wright joined Trump alongside other appointments such as Department of Government Efficiency picks Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at Saturday’s UFC fights before melting down over Wright being “[o]ne of the nation’s top fracking CEOs” and “fiercely criticized the existence of a climate crisis.”
“Wright, who has no government experience, has argued the impacts of climate change are overblown. But scientists agree, humans are causing global warming and climate change. This year is shaping up to be the hottest on record, with more extreme weather events made worse by climate change expected,” she huffed.
Fact-check: Pants on fire.
Wright has cultivated a relationship with the great team at American Conservation Coalition, a pro-environmental group that’s advocated for free market solutions to climate challenges.
Speaking at their Action summit last year, Wright called himself “a lifelong environmentalist” and deemed “climate change” to be “a real problem and I’ve been speaking on it for 20 years.”
As for Carr, Bruce downplayed his qualifications by merely stating he’s been at the FCC since 2012 before moving onto kicking dirt, lamenting he’s “received high praise from Elon Musk and wrote a chapter of the Project 2025 policy book how he would run the FCC.”
ABC’s Mary Bruce, upset with Trump naming @BrendanCarrFCC as his nominee to become FCC Chairman: “Now, overnight, Trump naming Brendan Carr to be FCC commissioner. He’s served there since 2012, received high praise from Elon Musk and wrote a chapter of the Project 2025 policy… pic.twitter.com/1BjunZOFT7
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 18, 2024
CBS had political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns bite the bullet on the transition picks. After huffing about Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, she too peddled misinformation about Wright, cutting him down to merely “a fracking company CEO and an opponent of efforts to fight climate change.”
Given CBS’s shenanigans with Vice President Harris’s 60 Minutes interview, the Tony Dokoupil-Ta-Nehisi Coates fiasco, and cutting portions of an interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to name a few, one could see why Huey-Burns would be worried about how Carr would see whether over-the-air broadcast networks like CBS are serving the public:
CBS’s Caitlin-Huey Burns was low-key freaking out on ‘CBS Mornings’ over President-Elect Trump tapping @BrendanCarrFCC to lead the FCC and @ChrisAWright_ to lead the Energy Department pic.twitter.com/cmevIR2053
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 18, 2024
HUEY-BURNS: And the latest pick, Brendan Carr, for FCC chairman. He’s a senior Republican member of the FCC who has drawn attention over his contribution to Project 2025, the planning document Trump attempted to distance himself from during the campaign. In a post last night, Carr seemed to take aim at broadcast media, stating they’re expected to operate in the public interest, and the FCC plans to enforce this obligation.
BRENDAN CARR : The remedies the FCC has ultimately would be license revocation if we find that it`s egregious.
HUEY-BURNS: Now, the FCC does not have the authority to punish or revoke the license of a broadcast station for content, only for obscenities, but Carr is expected to test the legal limits of the FCC, and Trump himself has called Carr a free speech warrior.
For good measure, CBS Mornings Plus also invoked Carr and Wright. Co-host Tony Dokoupil said in a news brief that Wright is “the CEO of a fracking company and an opponent of efforts to fight climate change” while Carr “has drawn controversy over his contribution to Project 2025, that conservative blueprint for this administration” and has “seemed to take aim at broadcast media.”
