Friday morning, the big three news networks tore into President Trump for his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord Thursday afternoon. Though the move was praised by conservatives, the networks solely reported from the left’s perspective, touting the "worldwide uproar" from liberal leaders.
Not only that, but the networks went a step further, fretting that Trump’s decision diminished the U.S.'s role globally.
ABC, CBS, and NBC led their reports by touting complaints from liberal leaders around the world, from Canada’s Justin Trudeau to France’s Emmanuel Macron.The broadcasts also proudly noted former President Obama and John Kerry’s rebukes of the decision, and gushed about the “resistance” here at home from over 30 mayors around the country who were trying to negotiate a deal directly with the United Nations on climate change.
But CBS This Morning’s coverage was the most heavy-handed and biased of the three. CBS spent multiple reports fretting about the impact this decision was going to have as well as taking time to highlight nasty comments from the EU, chastising Trump’s competency as our president.
Those remarks, which basically called out Trump as an idiot, came at the end of foreign correspondent Ben Tracy’s report:
To give you a sense of just how much has changed. The president of the European Commission said that he would likely be working more closely with China now than the United States. In rather scathing remarks he says that when President Trump was in Europe last week, they tried to explain the Paris accord to him in what they called simple terms and it appeared the president did not understand. Nora.
Later on, Charlie Rose and Face the Nation host John Dickerson complained Trump was “isolating America from the rest of the world” by making a decision that was only supported by his “base.” Rose and Dickerson downplayed the amount of people who supported the decision, insinuating that Trump was ignoring the concerns of the majority of the country:
“So with all this opposition from around the globe and here, what does the president gain?” Rose asked. “Well, what he gains is the support of those who are his most ardent supporters,” Dickerson responded.
“But people say he already had that. They've been through him thick and thin. And what it's done is isolated America from the rest of the world,” Rose lamented to Dickerson. The Face the Nation host bluntly answered that Trump “doesn't mind isolating America from the rest of the world,” because he only cares about his base.
“His view of politics is essentially that his base is what he needs to tend and keep paying attention to,” Dickerson stated.
In the next hour of CBS, the anchors fretted some more with financial contributor Mellody Hobson, making Chicken Little predictions about the impact this dire decision would have on just about everything asking questions like:
“I know you've been talking to a lot of CEOs, a lot of business leaders. What effect do you think this will have on the economy?”
“The headline in one German newspaper said American first, Earth last. Number one, What message do you think it sends to the world and have you heard about any upside here?”
Will America’s “leading role” in business around the world, “be diminished to the detriment of America?”
To that last question, Hobson responded definitively: “Absolutely,” adding that this decision was “not good for the American brand,” and “not a good thing.”
O’Donnell was the only one to ask about Trump’s reasoning for his decision. Hobson called Trump’s coal jobs argument “perplexing” saying the math didn’t add up. “To hang on to that as a narrative is just wrong,” she blasted.
