This debate was much less of a “moderators and Democrat candidate team up against the Republican candidate” than the Trump and Kamala Harris debate was. But that certainly doesn’t mean the moderators, CBS News' Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan, totally refrained from injecting party lines into the conversation.

The moderators, or CBS, immediately showed their bias. After an opening question about Israel and Iran, a perfectly logical lead-in topic as missiles were literally raining down on Israel as the debate got underway, climate change was the second question offered, before the economy and illegal immigration, despite it ranking dead last or near the bottom in polls of voters as an issue of concern. Climate change ranks far below inflation, health care, education, crime, and illegal immigration in every poll taken. But because it is a liberal cause célèbre, it matters more to the left-leaning media than issues more important to voters. Thus, its prominence in CBS’ moderators questioning and their behavior after.

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, O’Donnell framed a question about climate change by asserting that climate change makes hurricanes “larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.” The data demonstrate that this is false, of course, but her handlers felt the need to make sure she used the tragedy to apply pressure on the Republican vice presidential candidate and emotionally charge the question. Presenting the following question to Vance, she said that CBS polling found that “more than 60 percent of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change,” and she asked him what the Trump administration would do to reduce the alleged impact of climate change.

I want to isolate that bit about the CBS polling for a moment. I wasn’t able to easily find the poll they were referencing, but I won’t worry over the numbers there anyway, because people can claim to be in favor of the government doing “something” all they want. Yet when real policy hits pocketbooks and people have to see what their virtue signaling actually costs, their tune changes drastically.

For example, a poll conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (UC/AP) found that only 38 percent of Americans surveyed said that they would be willing to pay a $1 per month carbon fee to fight climate change. As the amount of monthly fee increased, support continued to fall. This same trend is seen in multiple polls, which means it is misleading to suggest that the “someone needs to do something” polling translates to voter support for higher energy costs and Green New Deal radicalism.

Vance deftly parried CBS’s slanted question, explaining that the Trump campaign’s environmental policy focus is on clean air and water, and pointed out that the Biden administration’s policies have resulted in more emissions by exporting our manufacturing base to places like China. This isn’t an argument we love, as it concedes the alarmist narrative a bit too much and sets the Trump campaign up for terrible ideas like the PROVE IT Act and other carbon-tax prerequisites, but it was serviceable in the debate to avoid getting bogged down in discussions of what Vance rightly called the “weird science” of climate change.

Unsurprisingly, Gov. Walz’s response immediately affirmed CBS’ misinformation, saying that Helene “roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we've seen.” A false claim that CBS demurred to fact check. As horrific as Helene was, many hurricanes throughout history have been more powerful, damaging, and deadly than it. Walz then bragged about the Inflation Reduction Act, possibly one of the most deceptively named bills since the Affordable Care Act.

The most astonishing part of this section of the debate, however, came at the very end of the relatively reasonable discussion about energy and foreign manufacturing and emissions, and it did not come from either of the candidates. After a short response from Walz in which he lied, saying that there had been no moratorium on natural gas and oil, moderator O’Donnell cut him off to tell him his time was up and, without even taking a breath, concluded with, “[t]he overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the earth's climate is warming at an unprecedented rate. Margaret?”

And moderator Margaret Brennan seamlessly pivoted to the next question on immigration.

She gave no time for either candidate to respond to her very random injection of the scientific establishment ad populum climate narrative argument, and it really seemed as if it was simply a line she was instructed to say at some point during the question period.

CBS had agreed that its moderators would not perform candidate “fact checks,” but it lied and did so anyway when it came to Vance’s statements a few times. It seems the media just can’t allow free speech when it comes to the Trump/Vance campaign. Rather than let Walz respond to Vance, we suppose thinking any response he made would be inadequate, CBS with alarmist talking points in hand, responded for him.

Surprised by how seemingly random this comment was, and also because of the repeated misinformation offered by the CBS moderators, we looked into CBS’ climate reporting background, and what we found was as predictable as it is shameful.

CBS is partnered with a radical climate propagandist group called Covering Climate Now, which urges journalists to connect everything to climate change and environmental justice, and instructs them to never platform “climate denialists.” Who is a climate denialist? Anyone who balks at their definition of “rapid, forceful action” or anyone who disputes the consensus narrative. It is a nightmare of an organization, baldly propagandistic, and news organizations like CBS News take their marching orders from them.

Keep your eyes peeled and take a gander at who is partnered with Covering Climate Now – what you find probably will not be all that surprising.

Linnea Lueken ([email protected]) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is the Director of the Robinson Center.