The West Coast is on fire, and there is no question whatsoever that these fires are out of control and raging because of climate change. This is true regardless of what sparked the fires, but leave it to Fox News to distort current arrests for arson into ways to politicize the destruction and cause.
Here are Jedidiah Bila, Pete Hegseth and Will Cain "reporting" on some arrests for arson, as outlined in the FoxNews.com article about the arrests for arson. In that article, it's made clear that authorities have dismissed political motives for the cause of the raging fires after a whacko Clackamas sheriff's deputy was caught on video blaming Antifa for setting the wildfires. That deputy has been placed on leave for those remarks, and the FBI was forced to take time to investigate and debunk the claims.
The first man they singled out was a homeless meth addict. The alleged arson he was arrested for was unrelated to the major Oregon fires raging, but they didn't bother to point that out, instead trying to tie him to "defund the police" rallies in Oregon, a claim which is not actually substantiated by anything that I could find from official sources.
Not content to stop there, they plowed on to California to claim that Governor Gavin Newsom was too hasty in his attempt to blame climate change for the fires if they were possibly started by arson. Of course the origin of a fire is less important than the climate in which they started. Record heat and scant rain mean out-of-control fires, whether started by arsonists, dry lightning, Edison equipment or idiotic gender reveal stunts.
When these flacks whine, "There's no tragedy, there's no moment too soon to jump and advance your political agenda and pin awful events on your political opponent," I'll just come back with this: Fox News never misses an opportunity to lie to their viewers and scapegoat others when it suits their political goals.
Partial transcript below, via Heather:
CAIN: Police arresting four people for alleged arson connecting to the wildfires.
BILA: Authorities say Michael Bakla was seen lighting a fire behind a house in Phoenix, Oregon. Another man is accused of setting a fire near a Washington highway. A report says he's a regular attendee of defund police rallies in Seattle... that last detail unfolding, pretty amazing. It's really incredible to see.
[…]
You know, I always want to be responsible about what it is we do not know yet. These arsonists, as of yet, we do not know exactly their ties to any extremist organization or what their motivations might be, but I think one thing is clear. We now know many of these fires in the west were set intentionally. What does that reveal Pete? What it reveals is, the brazen, political, monopolization of a tragedy by people like Gov. Gavin Newsom, who quickly jumped out and blamed these fires on climate change. There's no tragedy, there's no moment too soon to jump and advance your political agenda and pin awful events on your political opponent.
What this reveals, at the very least, without any information about their motives, is these were intentional fires, and Gavin Newsom attributed it to his political position.
HEGSETH: And almost immediately, to your point Will, and who do you blame then for that? You can blame everyone, he should blame himself for the gas guzzler he drives. There's no actual accountability for that. In this case, as you mentioned, we'll learn more about, whatever lunatic motivation goes into contributing to the arson and these fires, again, as we mentioned, that local affiliate reporting that one of the members at least, was a regular attendee to Seattle's defund the police rallies and riots. But again, as we get more information, we pray for people on the west coast who are under siege from this on a daily basis
