Former Governor Jay Inslee Strikes Back at Trump Threats

0:00Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump's cabinet members making appearances on Fox and other right wing channels, making complete fools of themselves on such critical issues. I just want to show you this. This is Donald Trump's energy secretary, Chris Wright. Let me just play this clip for you. Utterly humiliating and dangerous. Here, play this first clip. The Department of Energy, meanwhile, released its climate report assessing the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. It includes carbon dioxide induced warming, maybe less damaging than previously believed, which many people expected. The DOE is receiving pushback, however, from The New York Times.

0:36Ben Meiselas:The Times writes that the Energy Department is attacking climate science in contentious report. Secretary, your reaction. Oh, what a crazy headline. But I guess that's par for the course for The New York Times. In fact, we're doing the exact opposite. We're exposing the American people and the broader scientific community to what actually is in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports, not the hyperbolic summaries for policymakers or media headlines that claim all sorts of crazy stuff. This is what we actually know. How often do you hear that the planet's getting greener because there's more carbon dioxide in the air?

1:15Ben Meiselas:It contributes to increased crop productivity and greater wilderness, greener wilderness. How often do you hear that deaths from extreme weather had been falling like a stone for a century and that ensured losses from extreme weather events had been on a multi-decadal decline? Those are just facts. Instead, we're scaring kids in school. We're promoting an alarmist view of climate change that's simply contrary to the facts. It's a real physical phenomenon that we want to talk about, honestly. Yeah, those are not the facts. Quite literally, everything he says there is a lie. And you hear him saying climate change is actually great for everybody.

1:58Ben Meiselas:I mean, this is climate change is an amazing thing. So they're going to put out reports saying that this benefits everybody. I mean, it doesn't get more dystopian than that. Or does it? I mean, here you have Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, celebrating that the Trump regime will eliminate wind and solar power energy. Say goodbye to wind and solar. It's just coal, everybody, as other countries are developing multifaceted energy to help them, one, when it comes to their energy production needs, help their economies, but also help the environment. This is what the Trump regime is saying. Here, play this clip.

2:38There are still a lot of wind projects that are moving forward, and the ones in the ocean as well, Empire Wind, Vineyard Wind. Are those going to be stopped as a result of this?

2:49Ben Meiselas:Well, I think the big thing, Martha, is with the one big beautiful bill has taken a major step forward. And finally, after 33 years phasing out these just massive subsidies that that were creating essentially tax schemes as opposed to power generation projects for wind and solar. And with the phase out of those, I mean, I think we're going to see almost zero applications for new projects that come in because 60 or 70 percent of the value of a wind project, perhaps even more for offshore wind, which was very expensive, was the value of the tax credit. And of course, we're for. So they're talking about killing industries, but what is the government going to be subsidizing?

3:35Ben Meiselas:What are they focused on? Coal, yes, but also building nuclear reactors on the moon. Here's Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary, talking about bringing fission to the moon's surface. Here play this clip. We do have some solar, but if you want sustainable life on the moon, you need an energy source. So we're going to bring fission to the moon's surface to power our base. It makes complete sense. Now, some might say, well, the launch is somewhat complicated, right? These are not active. They're not live when we launch. All right. Enough of that. I mean, quite literally crazy, crazy, crazy stuff.

4:14Ben Meiselas:Let's bring in former Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Governor, you're also involved with Climate Power and their accountability project, holding people like that and initiatives like that accountable. First, I just want to get your reaction to what it is that I showed you, and then we'll dig deeper. Well, I guess what I'd say is that they have fully embraced the Flat Earth Society approach. The next thing I expect is that they will order NASA not to show any photographs of the Earth showing its round because that would distort their Flat Earth approach. Look, I was a governor, and when you're a governor, you deal with the real world.

4:55And the real world for me was trying to take care of the people in Medical Lake and Malden. These are two towns in eastern Washington that totally burned down because these wildfires that we're experiencing that by fact. And if you want to talk about facts, they've increased in double. They've doubled in the last 30 or 40 years in the western United States. It's trying to take care of the flood victims. It's not just Texas. The flood victims, I remember talking to a family that had one flood. They spent a year rebuilding their home and they had a party. And the next day they had another flood.

5:28It went right through their picture window trying to take care of them. It's trying to take care of the agricultural people. Look, this is bad for agriculture. Our wine industry is hurt because the smoke from the forest fires gets on our grapes and then can reduce the quality of our wine. So I really don't know what world they want to live in. You can only explain this in two ways. One, they really just don't give a damn about people's lives who are getting hurt by this monster. And two, they think they can hoodwink the American people who are now seeing this. And to me, it's just so callous that they could come up to somebody whose home has just been full of mud and tell them that climate change is a good thing, that these floods are increasing dramatically.

6:14And by the way, the billion dollar losses we're having from these extreme climate events have gone up by four or five times in the last decade and a half. So, you know, I guess they think line will pay off. Ultimately, I don't believe that's the case. Americans are increasingly recognizing the threat that we're facing. So I guess what I'm saying is I worry less about artificial intelligence and more about the natural stupidity and deceit, which they're trying to pull over the American people right now. Right.

6:46Ben Meiselas:I mean, energy is not limitless. It needs to be harnessed in the right way. And correct me if I'm wrong, on the current path we're going, there is somewhat of an expiration date in terms of if you pursue this path, there's going to start to be lots of energy shortages. And so wind and solar was however you want to view it, whether a long-term solution, a stopgap, medium-term solution, in addition to the fact that it brought jobs to communities. When I've spoken to people like Senator Schatz of Hawaii and others, who's a big proponent of Wynn, what they're saying is, we're going to look back in five years, and there's going to start to be grid outages everywhere, kind of like what we saw in Texas a few years back.

7:33Ben Meiselas:And people are going to be like, what happened? We actually need this right now at a time they're talking about putting nuclear fission on the moon, which they're not going to do? Well, we'd like to have some power on Earth, not just here on the moon. It'd be nice if our elected officials thought about getting power to our homes on Earth, not just the moon. And the fact of the matter is we know electrical demand is going to skyrocket in part because of the energy needs of data centers and our new internet-based system, but just because of the growth of the United States. And so these brownouts are a real concern.

8:09And when you have this situation where you know, or the president should know, we need a lot more electricity, does it really make a lot of sense to kneecap, you know, 70 % of the new possible energy sources we have, which is also the cheapest energy sources? This is the thing that has always astounded me about Trump. He wants to say he wants to be dominant in energy, but the first thing he wants to do is to basically take three of the most prominent energy generating sources and make them illegal in the United States. Look, if you need more energy, the dumbest thing to do is to disallow access to wind, solar, and advanced batteries, three of the most productive ways of producing a new energy.

8:57And yet that is what he's doing. By the way, it's not just reduction of subsidies. I heard one of these speakers say, well, all we're doing is taking away subsidies. That's not all they're doing. They're doing everything humanly possible to make it impossible to build wind power, advanced batteries, and solar power. The most recent one is they denied a permit in Idaho of this really significant wind power farm that would really help us in northwest part of the country avoid these brownouts. It's not just that they took away the subsidy. They took away the permit for no good reason whatsoever. So they're going out of their way every possible way they have to chop down every wind tower and put blackout curtains over every solar panel.

9:41And it's not just access, it's cost. Because these are the least costly in 90 % plus of the areas in the United States. These are the costs that are dramatically cheaper than coal-based energy. So he's not only exposing us to more brownouts, he's exposing us if we can get the electricity, it's going to be more expensive. Over$150 a person in the United States can have higher electrical costs on average as a result of shooting ourselves in the foot. So it's maddening that he is exposing us to the health risks associated with heat domes that killed 150 of my citizens a couple summers ago. It's maddening that he's allowing our homes to burn down across the United States.

10:30Shoot, we have a fire burning today in the Olympic National Park in the rainforest. This is a place that's called a rainforest, but it's on fire. We can't put it out because it's so dry. We've had two droughts in the last four years in my state. And so they don't care about our health, but they also don't care about the cost of our energy because they want to fatten the pockets of their fossil fuel buddies. This should be maddening to every American.

10:59Ben Meiselas:You know, and then it feels like it all goes back to some personal grievance Donald Trump had at some point in his life. You know, the windmills that he didn't like being built around his Aberdeen and Turnberry golf courses. That's why he's always hated windmills around there. He likes the idea of climate change bringing the water closer to the Mar-a-Lago property. He thinks it gives him kind of more exclusive waterfront and beachfront. He's said that in speeches before. So, you know, and it's like what he does with the trade war also. So, you know, he'll say, you know, in Japan, they do some test where they drop a bowling ball, which they don't do, on the car.

11:43Ben Meiselas:And if the car breaks, they put a tariff on an American car. And that's why there's no American cars in Japan, which is which is false. And you have these ridiculous, you know, to your point, flat earth style pretext and justifications. and then all of these people around him, the enablers, then start building the reports and building the junk science, the fake stuff to dismantle things based on, and then they go, it's so crazy that you would say things which are like facts, and then the crazy things they talk about like building nuclear reactors on the moon where people can't even afford groceries, like that's what we want to do, and it's just got to stop.

12:25Ben Meiselas:I guess I'll leave it. I'm not sure if that's much of a question or me just venting to you. Well, it's more of a statement than a question, but I think they're going to have problems with this because they're running into reality. It's people who can't go outside because it's too hot. It's people like in Seattle, Washington, our kids could not go outside and play two summers because of the smoke. It was actually a health hazard to go outside to play. It's people having to abandon their homes on the coast, which is happening and build their homes out. What I'm saying is that they are running into reality.

12:58And we need, it's our job. The question is, what are we going to do about this? Right? That's the real question. What are you and I and everybody else going to do about it? And what we're going to do, I hope, is to make sure that we use all of our voices to speak against this lunacy, but also make sure that we elect people to Congress, November 2026, that are going to push back about this anti-science position. Whatever you're partying, you ought to be pro-science. And I hope people are now starting to realize November 2026 is going to be important in congressional elections so that we can actually get people elected who will put a stop to this craziness to deny science and inexpensive energy.

13:39That's our goal, and we ought to be doing it. And everybody can play a role in this to talk about this issue. I'm glad you're talking about I talk about it. I'm working with this group, Climate Power, to try to spread a scientific message on a nonpartisan basis. Because both parties ought to be working on this. Unfortunately, there's only one. But this is so central to our lives. I'm just so – now here's some good news, if I may, because I don't think we should have a discussion without some good news. If, in fact, we get these things built, if we can get Trump's hands off our throats on this, the fact of the matter is we are experiencing a clean energy revolution that is so effective, it knocks your socks off.

14:25Listen, it took us 40 years to build the first terawatt of solar energy, 40 years. Then the next terawatt, it took us only two years. The third terroir only took us one year. So the pace of growth of renewable energy is extraordinary as long as we get the permits to actually build it, because the technology is fantastic. The price continues to come down. The technology continues to be increased. The efficiency continues to improve. Marrying this with advanced batteries, and we have two of the most advanced battery companies that uses a new silicon anode in the state of Washington. These technologies are incredible.

15:07We just need to be able to deploy them and take this guy's foot off of the engine of progress. So there's good news out there as long as we can push the go button.

15:19Ben Meiselas:Thank you so much, as always, Governor Inslee. Thanks for the work you're doing now. And please come back. And if you ever want to write for the Midas Touch sub stack, it goes out to about a million people. They love these issues. You never know when you're going to get something from me. It'll come in over the transom. Sounds good. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.