Biden appears ready to declare global warming 'emergency'
'The Five' debate after President Biden visits former site of Massachusetts coal plant as Democrats turn on Manchin.
President Biden spoke about – but did not formally declare – a climate emergency due to global warming during a trip Wednesday to the site of a recently-leveled former coal-fired power plant near the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border, and Fox News host Jesse Watters called the move misguided.
Biden said "climate change is literally an existential threat" and celebrated the plant's demise during a speech in Somerset, Mass., as he and his party have been criticizing Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., for not toeing the line on the green agenda.
Watters said the president should be more worried about the nationwide violent crime spike and inflation rather than any purported global warming being caused by fossil fuel plants, which he and other "Five" hosts noted literally power the economy.
He suggested Biden's less-than-photogenic background of an empty lot that once hosted the Brayton Point Power Station was a rushed photo-op following Manchin's torpedoing of his left-wing climate agenda.
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Joe Biden has faced a frequent nemesis to his agenda in fellow Democrat Joe Manchin. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
"Yeah. I think we need the street safer, not the air, Joe," Watters said. "And that's what happens: You do a shot in front of a landfill when you have to scramble when Manchin tanks your domestic agenda," he said.
Manchin disagreed with contentions he is "stringing along" his caucus, as he supports prescription-drug-pricing and ObamaCare sections of the Democrats' spending bill but considered climate-related provisions a red line.
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Rocks and coal. (iStock)
Watters later said Biden doesn't actually believe most of the climate change alarmism he is again discussing, claiming the president as Delaware senator was never a "green guy" but a politician that simply hooked up with Barack Obama and more recently Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
"He probably couldn't explain to you the science of global warming if you asked him straight up," Watters claimed.
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Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., has criticized Democrats' climate policies. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
Watters said the 200 workers at the now-demolished plant are likely producing parts for windmills in the area instead, but reported the company involved is owned by the Italians and therefore Biden is basically "doing corporate welfare for Italian companies" rather than supporting American fuel refining.
If Biden were really committed to the green agenda, he would forfeit his gas-guzzling sports car, the host continued, adding that no amount of windmills could replace the reliance Massachusetts or his home state of Delaware have on fossil fuels.
Watters and the panel also discussed how a physically renewable energy source – nuclear – is being conspicuously criticized or downplayed amid the Democrats' rush to that sector of energy production.
In one example, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, notably shuttered the massive Indian Point nuclear station across the Hudson River from Haverstraw, N.Y., which critics pointed out may put a strain the New York City grid.