CNN has apparently thrown every editorial standard it ever had out the window because its latest attack on EPA Director Lee Zeldin ended in colossal embarrassment. The fact that Kaitlin Collins is involved makes it all the better for those of us looking on and laughing.
The setup is a series of orders Zeldin made ending various programs at the EPA that the administration deemed wasteful. As RedState reported, part of that was a massive grant structure that seemed to just be a slush fund for former President Joe Biden’s political buddies.
SEE: Stacey Abrams Linked to $2 Billion Environmental Grant Rolled Up By DOGE
Unsurprisingly, CNN was none too impressed by Zeldin’s moves to clean up the books, and their “Chief Climate Correspondent” took to the air to try to show that everything is a chaotic mess. According to Bill Weir, things are so chaotic that the EPA forgot to remove “placeholders” in some of the orders.
Let’s listen to the clip before we get to the big twist.
Another media “fact check” face plant where the fact checker doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s talking about. “OOOO b/c” is not a typo.
40 CFR Part 60 Subpart OOOO, or Quad O, is a federal reg under the Clean Air Act.
Also, those aren’t zeroes, it’s the letter “O”. pic.twitter.com/adPkShbPHS
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) March 13, 2025
WEIR: Uh, 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 zero, zero, zero, you can see there.
COLLINS: Oops
WEIR: It’s sort of shoot first, fill out the press release later.
This is why the “fact-checking” industry is such a joke. It is filled with supposed “experts” who have no idea what they are actually talking about, yet are more than willing to make false assertions with total confidence. The press release shown in the clip does not read, “Zero, zero, zero.” Those are the letter “O,” and they are the identifier for a specific regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Zeldin took to social media to correct the record after Weird’s embarrassing flub.
ZELDIN: Another media “fact check” face plant where the fact checker doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s talking about. “OOOO b/c” is not a typo. 40 CFR Part 60 Subpart OOOO, or Quad O, is a federal reg under the Clean Air Act.Also, those aren’t zeroes, it’s the letter “O”.
It’s not news to anyone reading this, assuming this isn’t your first visit to the site, but the press chooses their narratives first and then tries to build evidence around them. In this case, CNN desperately wanted to claim the administration was acting haphazardly and that it completely bungled what should have been obvious to any researcher checking this story before allowing it on air.
My absolute favorite part of this entire thing, though, is Collins sarcastically mocking Zeldin by saying “Oops,” even as it is her correspondent that is in the midst of getting the story completely wrong. That is the kind of arrogance that has led to the press suffering its worst approval ratings in history. Will she correct the record and apologize on her show on Thursday night? She should, but somehow, I doubt she does.
