Guest “Just when you thought Democrats couldn’t get any dumber” by David Middleton
Whitehouse: ‘I Can’t Prove It’, But I Think Fossil Fuel Industry Getting Trump to Undercut Weather Forecasting
By Ian Hanchett 10 Jul 2025
On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) stated that he “can’t prove it” but believes that the fossil fuel industry is trying to get the Trump administration to undercut weather forecasting because “They know that when people talk about the weather and give weather warnings, they’re going to talk about climate change now.”
[…]
How can a person become this stupid? Does this total fracking moron not realize that accurate weather forecasts are critically important to oil & gas operations, particularly offshore operations?
Well, it appears that it is very easy to be this STUPID when you’re Sheldon Whitehouse. Stupid, corrupt, vindictive and, did I mention stupid?
Climate Policy Enemies List
Whitehouse has delivered more than 200 speeches on the Senate floor dedicated to climate change and other environmentalist topics. 9 He has accused some in the energy industry of acting like “thugs” who “own the joint” (meaning the U.S. Congress), and has declared government officials who oppose him to be “stooges” of the energy industry. 9
In a May 2015 opinion piece in the Washington Post, Whitehouse advocated a federal lawsuit against the energy industry using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. 4 Originally designed for and used in criminal cases to prosecute the mafia, RICO has a civil-lawsuit component that has since been applied to corporate targets such as cigarette manufacturers. Whitehouse admitted he did not “have enough information” to know whether “racketeering activity” had actually occurred with the energy industry, but speculated the civil discovery in a RICO lawsuit might uncover the evidence. 4 In March 2016, then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she had referred Whitehouse’s RICO concern to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 10
In July 2016, two months after the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands sent a subpoena demanding private internal research records, communications, and donor information to libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Whitehouse led a group of 19 U.S. Senate Democrats in a two-day series of floor speeches denouncing CEI and many other free-market think tanks, with Whitehouse saying the research organizations were part of a “filthy thing in our democracy.” The Senate campaign was aimed at passage of a Congressional resolution that would have called on the non-profit groups to cooperate with “active or future investigations” of their climate-policy positions that might be launched against them by federal or state law enforcement officials. 11
The CEI president responded, saying Whitehouse had become the “new Sen. Joe McCarthy,” and that it “is unhealthy for democracy and abusive when members of Congress create an enemies list based on policy positions.” 11 A joint letter sent to all of the Democratic Senators from 22 targeted think tanks stated: “Your threat is clear: There is a heavy and inconvenient cost to disagreeing with you. Calls for debate will be met with political retribution. That’s called tyranny. And, we reject it.” 5
Whitehouse demanded a more-serious pursuit of a RICO case in 2018 and complained that Democrats still “haven’t done the basic due diligence prosecutors do putting an org chart together against a criminal enterprise.” 12
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He is that way because he is a LEFTIST a sign of a growing mental illness that many people in the democrat party shares how else do they be so stupid on many issues and their long running effort to destroy the President with numerous lawfare that is an attack on the Republic and demonize CO2 a critical component for life and plant growth.
Stupid is stupid does……
He should be forced to travel back and forth from Rhode Island via ass.
Does AOC know where Rhode Island is?
In that case, we would see an ass sitting on a donkey.
The Senator is a great example of the constant struggle to determine if a person is stupid or dishonest. With Liberals you have also consider that they are furthering the party agenda. Alex, I’ll take all three for the million.
I usually come down on the side of stupid. In the UK we had a small aircraft crash at Southend. Up popped the local MP – Labour – to provide us with a vital inciteful piece of information. He said that we knew there was a crew on board. What? – as in the plane wasn’t flying itself? Holy shit! How is this guy not head of the aviation authority!!
On the Senator’s website, he just bragged three days ago about having given his 300th climate ‘wake up’ speech. After three hundred, maybe he should ask himself why he is so ineffective?
How many speeches on Naziism did Hitler give in his life as a Nazi?
How many speeches on Marxism/Communism did Lenin give in his lifetime?
How many Sunday sermons has the average clergyman given in his lifetime?
How many speeches in support of socialism has Senator Bernie Sanders given in his political career?
I could go on……
And they have all gone with the wind, in little years nobody will know they even were made.
Curious that you felt the need to interject your religious bigotry into the conversation.
But, taken at face value, every example of rhetoric that you gave has been more successful in furthering their respective causes than Senator Whitehouse’s speeches have been in stopping Climate Change™
Please follow Willis’s advice and quote the exact words you see as religious bigotry.
I’m not PCman999, but I believe this is what was the referred line.
“How many Sunday sermons has the average clergyman given in his lifetime?”
I knew that. I was trying to draw his attention to it and see if he would point out why it was religious bigotry. It left the implication in my mind that he thought CD was equating clergymen with despots, and I did not read it that way. But CD has responded on his own and better than I could.
The key word here is “average”. I remember Fulton J. Sheen, Catholic bishop known for his television program “Life Is Worth Living.” Neither he nor his talks were average, but memory is gone on specifics. Most other clergy and the sermons were unremarkable, that is, average.
“……your religious bigotry into the conversation.”
_____________________________________
I probably should have left out the question regarding the clergyman. I am not a religious bigot.
My point here is that the things that Lenin (and Stalin) and Hitler actually did left a much bigger mark in human history than the things that they said in their speeches, and humanity paid a dear price for it.
So, Sen. Whitehouse can shoot off his big mouth all he wants in the senate about the climate problem he believes exists (over 200 times). However, it is what he has done (or not done?) about the climate issue that matters a whole lot more. Our need for fossil fuel energy in the U.S. and globally hasn’t gone anywhere, so his climate alarmist speeches are largely pointless and are probably worthy of being laughed at more than anything else.
Bigotry means intolerance and how that applies here is a stretch.
Whitehorse is trying to become the D’Artagnan for the 3 Musketeers for climate change, Gore, Kerry, and Schatz.
“Whitehouse admitted he did not “have enough information” to know whether “racketeering activity” had actually occurred with the energy industry, but speculated the civil discovery in a RICO lawsuit might uncover the evidence.”
I believe it was Lavrenti Beria who said “show me the man and I will show you the crime.” It seems he has been reincarnated in Whitehouse.
Most courts frown on this type of fishing expedition. That is, you need evidence of a crime, BEFORE you are allowed to start investigating a person or organization.
Politicians are no longer required to believe in what they say. They are simply professional entertainers playing to an audience, in this case, the progressive nutjobs.
The most expensive show on earth.
Might I cite the case of Senator Harry Reid where he lied that Mitt Romney had paid no taxes for 10 years? He later admitted that he had lied and then said, “We won, didn’t we?”
Projecting a bit, Sheldon?
He is beyond stupid. But cooking the books is what the Ds do, so he assumes everyone does it. Have you seen the corrections to the economic data numbers released the middle of last year. They tried to fluff the weakening.
I can”t prove it, but I think Sheldon is a Communist stooge sent here to undermine our economy, and democracy itself. Perhaps the FBI should investigate him.
Difference is, you have a very high chance of being correct. !
He proves it every time he opens his mouth.
In one of those speeches, he pinned all his hopes for his claim that the industry ran disinformation campaigns on a single “leaked industry memo.” A memo, it turns out, which was never implemented in any form anywhere by anyone associated with the fossil fuel industry. Instead of the Senate being tasked with investigating the fossil fuel industry, Senator Whitehouse should be put under investigation concerning who fed him that phrase and whether he and his staff ever checked the veracity of the accusation he made.
Look at the comments of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on various topics and they all indicate he is a devious and disingenuous poltician or in plain English a dishonest person.
They are not the same?
Whitehouse may or may not be stupid, but if he isn’t he certainly knows what his base is capable of believing.
Is Whitehouse stupid? Probably not. But he is a classic propagandist who relies on omission and distortion of facts, as well as emotion, to manipulate the “target”. Let the ‘buyer” beware or they will be manipulated by political Whitehouse types and media if they don’t critically evaluate the spin that they are being bombarded with.
There’s a lot of competition but Whitehouse has to be on the short list for Dumbest Senator. But what about his constituents, who keep voting for him?
I’m a big fan of representative democracy but it has always struck me as problematic that a stupid and uninformed vote counts the same as a wise and knowledgeable one…
I’m thinking that our politicians should pass intelligence and ethics exams to be eligible for office and be regularly drug tested once elected.
“Politicians were mostly people who had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
George R. R. Martin
But what if they cheat on the ethics exams?
I’m of the belief that it’s not just presidential races that are rigged…
That’s been the big problem throughout history: How to put the power to rule into the hands of those with enough knowledge and wisdom to use it well, and only those. And how do we tell who they are?
We currently operate on the theory that those who are old enough ( the exact age varies from country to country) that they can be presumed to have acquired enough knowledge and wisdom to be allowed to do other “adult” things, and have not been convicted of any really nasty crimes, should be able to vote and hold public office. This, as you point out, may not necessarily be correct.
Requiring people to prove they are reasonably alive and aware of what is going on around them is probably a good idea too. I frequently see things like “All residents of Chicago born before 1900 vote the straight democratic ticket, no matter how deep they’re buried.” asserted. 😉 😉 And also I have several relatives of advanced age who have become pretty unaware and some who are actually in nursing homes because they have an advanced dementia, yet they are still on the voting roles and have “mail in” ballots sent to them. I or any of several other people could easily vote those ballots.
Now I have always voted ever since I became eligible, but should I have? Neither of my Grandmothers was ever allowed to vote, nor if I had lived in that time, (Eskimo squaws, and all that) would I have been. So why should I, or anybody else for that matter, vote now? I submit this and previous posts as evidence that I can write reasonably grammatical English prose, but that, by itself, seems insufficient: A good many people can spew out thousands of pretty words without ever appearing to rub two brain cells together. I graduated from high school and spent two years in a college studying to be an astronomer. Not good enough: I know people who scrawl PhD after their signatures who appear to lack the wisdom God gave a grape (FECKIN EEJITS), not to mention observe herds of people at all educational levels who carry on like yammerheads ( Whoopie Ding, Occasionally Coherent, et al, are you paying attention?) for hours nearly every day. Once I got into construction, I spent the rest of my working life as an operating engineer building roads and bridges. Just because however, I could cram my (in them days) raven tresses under a hard hat, jump on a machine and move a pile of dirt and rocks, grind the big ones into little ones, or turn the little ones into hot mix asphalt as needed doesn’t mean I gained more than practical experience getting things done. True wisdom might still elude me.
The closest I have come to a good answer stems from when at age twelve in the junior high library, I read “Starship Troupers” for the first time. Heinlein’s idea was that good voters would be those who had demonstrated that they could put the welfare of the whole ahead of their own, at least for a little while, and that a good way to test for this would be to require all those who wanted to vote to spend two years or more, maybe a lot more, doing whatever hard dirty work the federation needed doing. If you wanted to vote you singed up to “pay your service.” You might be a computer programmer in the sky watch, you might go build a research base in Antarctica, you might even be a soldier. In any case you would be overworked and harassed, likely need to put your life on the line and maybe lose it, all for, as the protagonist, johnny’s, father tells him “a nominal privilege that pays not one centavo.”
Could such a system as described in the book actually work in the real would? Heinlein seems to have thought it would. I agree, in principle, but think there would be many more problems making it work in practice than he mentioned in the book, particularly since it would have to work not only worldwide, but throughout a federation including numerous extrasolar planets and likely extra terrestrials beings as well. I think we need to figure out something better than the best we now have whether or not it’s along the lines of what Heinlein thought up as background in a story he wrote as a juvenile sf novel.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to run on this long, but may the Force be with us.
Loved “Starship Troopers”. 🙂
I read a scifi story many years ago. The take from it that is relevant is: (a) anyone who wants the office is automatically disqualified and (b) whoever holds the office must hold it until he does a good enough job to get elected out of it. (b) is based on the person really not wanting that office at all, so they would be motivated to get a good job done so they could leave.
Fantasy, I know.
I’ve felt that those who have no skin in the game, shouldn’t be able to vote.
In other words, only net tax payers get to vote.
It would certainly help if the electorate were literate, numerate and practicimg critical thinking. Being well-informed on the issues is also critical.
I’m Mazie Hirono and I approved this message.
Are we sure Sheldon Whitehouse is not Naomi Oreskes identifying as a man?
No, he is prettier than she is.
Isn’;t’ it possible also that the proponents of green energy and initiatives are over-exaggerating the supposed threats made by climate change, if it’s actually happening to begin with? When governments stand to boost revenue with carbon taxation and green product peddlers see the opportunity to wring more money out of citizens and consumers, isn’t it possible they aren’t hesitating to attribute ordinary weather fluctuations to excessive fossil fuel use, or would they never stoop so low?
not just possible but IMO in the most vocal poitical cases probable.The cause is populated by politicians, zealots and grifters (redundant) and relies upon fear, ignorance and compliant media.
Evidence? See: WA State’s Climate Commitment Act
Yet another example of – “You can’t have a rational conversation with an irrational person.” In this particular case he can’t prove his assertion, but wants it accepted as true anyway.
He can’t prove energy companies are conspiring with the Trump administration, and he can’t prove CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
Whitehouse says: I can’t prove CO2 is dangerous but we should go ahead and bankrupt ourselves trying to implement Net Zero anyway, just in case.
Our side needs to form a group and gather all the information we can proving our case. We also need to gather all the information the other side uses that just ain’t so. In addition we need to gather all the things they claimed would happen if we didn’t stop using fossil fuels and only use renewables but didn’t. We also need to gather all the information supporting the notion that renewables can never be the primary supplier to the grid or heavy manufacturing.
Then when one of these knuckledraggers says stuff like what Whitehouse is saying we need to make a big deal out of it and insist that he prove his case if he ever dares to prove it we will already be prepared and bury him and any other CAGW bottom feeder that is foolish enough to face the truth.
We already did that, Bob. This is it: WUWT. And friends, like the Bookmarked sites. Please send $$$. Thank you.
David, David. Outhouse was obviously off his meds when he did that MSNBC show. Give him a break! Oh. He’s not on meds. OK, nevermind. 😉
Next from democrats liars: Trump policies have degraded the moon’s orbit making a collision with Earth eminent!
At this point in the pathetic track record of nonsense from Whitehouse and RI, the world is not listening.
Climate scare AI says global warming causes old boarding houses labeled as assisted living centers to burn down.
“A filthy thing in our democracy” is any assertion, suggestion, or even mere speculation that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) might be mistaken about anything.
Sen.Whitehouse recommended my imprisonment for ThoughtCrime a number of years ago, so naturally I take his cockamamie remarks a bit more seriously than ravings of the average quack. Yes, it’s personal, not just business.
“Climate deniers” should be thrown into the hoosegow, according to the inestimable Senator.
And yet, there’s no such thing as a climate denier. I have yet to meet or hear of a single individual — politician, scientist, influencer, superstitious crank, or witch doctor — who denies there is a climate. By Sen. Whitehouse’s exacting standards, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the notion that carbon dioxide is the control knob for climate, and that draconian reductions are necessary lest the world become uninhabitable really, really soon, is a “climate denier,” and really really needs to be tossed into the nearest clink in order to save humanity.
That puts most of Asia, with 60% of the world’s people, firmly into the climate denier camp. China, India, Indonesia, Russia, et alia, with eight times the U.S. population, are “climate deniers,” by his standards.
Sen. Whitehouse is going to need a lot of prisons.
Being that news media and weather apps have been gobbled up by multinational billionaires. My guess is that A.I. super computers are in charge of guessing the forecast … 20/20 still beats 50/50 doom-casters.
And I thought here in the UK we had the moron bar set low…trust you guys to try and beat us.
Does one have to be stupid to become a US Senator, or does becoming a US Senator cause one to become stupid?