Fox News Keeps Discovering Young Diners in ‘Real America’ Who Are Extremely Worried About Climate Change

Fox News Keeps Discovering Young Diners in ‘Real America’ Who Are Extremely Worried About Climate Change

A diner patron in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania got a little existential with Todd Piro of Fox News during Tuesday morning’s Fox & Friends, reminding the reporter that we’re all going to die in the long run.

Piro was conducting interviews in the wake of Bernie Sanders’ town hall in Bethlehem on Monday night. He spoke first to a man named Seth, a small-business owner, who is worried about how the country will pay for all of Sanders’ plans. Seth told Piro that “as a country here, we have founded ourselves on principles of smaller government and to increase the government size when we have a debt the size that we already have. It’s going to be very difficult.”

Seth then threw in a bit of a curveball by saying that he thinks the country should make it easier for people to get a good education, which could really goose the economy. Since one of Sanders’ signature proposals is to eliminate tuiton at four-year public universities, this seemed like a good moment to dig into the contradiction between Seth’s concern over the debt and putting such an expensive plan into action.

Alas, Piro wasn’t interested. He moved onto Seth’s daughter, Kristin, a student. Piro notes that “she says when you are talking to your friends about an issue, the number-one issue that you guys focus on is climate change.”

Kristin agreed: “Ultimately the other issues are all solvable but if the planet starts catching on fire and we’re all dead, it doesn’t do us any good to see how much money we could make.”

Kristin must be studying Existentialist Philosophy.

“But what’s interesting,” Piro responded, perhaps missing the interesting part, “is that you and your dad were talking about this issue a few days ago…[and] had a heated discussion about how to pay for it.”

This keeps happening to Piro. He goes into a diner in some Rust Belt or Midwestern city, hears a young person talk about climate change being the biggest, most existential threat to the planet’s existence, and ignores their statements with some faux concern about the costs of mitigating the problem, through the Green New Deal or some other mechanism. Maybe he should stop asking if he’s not getting the answers that would please the Fox & Friends audience.

Watch the clip up top, via Fox News.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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