One night after he incorrectly accused EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of incompetence by claiming he put out an incomplete press release, CNN climate correspondent Bill Weir returned to The Source with Kaitlin Collins on Thursday to admit he got it wrong and what he thought was a typo or placeholder was a real EPA regulation, but not before he suggested that he had good reason to believe it was actual incompetence on the EPA’s part.
Weir did not admit it was Zeldin himself who posted a video of the segment on X that led to this mea culpa, but he did acknowledge, “I have to make a correction. On one of those, last night, as we were trying to make sense of this, I speculated that this particular press release that says, ‘Trump EPA Announces OOOO b/c Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Rules Strangling American Energy Producers.’”
The man CNN pays to be the climate expert then admitted he was unaware of the regulations, while also blaming the administration for his mistake, “Because we had seen a couple typos on the other press releases, in the haste of this, I speculated that that was some sort of a typo or a placeholder. I now know that OOOOb and OOOOc are parts of Clean Air regulations. Some of those were put in definitions of different substances, like methane, limits on leaks in oil and gas production, all of that that now the Trump administration wants to strip out. So, it is important to be precise in these days. So, we regret that error and making this correction now.”
Moving back to the rules themselves, Weir reported, “But these declarations, Kaitlan, yesterday are just the beginning of a long process. They have to list these new rules online. There’s public comment period. Some of these decisions will go to court before anything really changes for the American people.”
He further declared, “So, it’ll be interesting to see if Administrator Zeldin can explain how these moves, as he said in his video, will make driving your car cheaper or heating your home or running your business cheaper when some of these are just allowing big companies to pollute more. So, this is all very early in the stages, as we know.”
While Weir worries about “allowing big companies to pollute more,” maybe CNN can fly him back to Antarctica to continue his journalistic services in the studies of whale poop.
Here is a transcript for the March 13 show:
CNN The Source with Kaitlan Collins
3/13/2025
9:51 PM
BILL WEIR: We had 20 different press releases come out, in about two hours. And I have to make a correction. On one of those, last night, as we were trying to make sense of this, I speculated that this particular press release that says, “Trump EPA Announces OOOO b/c Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Rules Strangling American Energy Producers.”
Because we had seen a couple typos on the other press releases, in the haste of this, I speculated that that was some sort of a typo or a placeholder. I now know that OOOOb and OOOOc are parts of Clean Air regulations. Some of those were put in definitions of different substances, like methane, limits on leaks in oil and gas production, all of that that now the Trump administration wants to strip out.
So, it is important to be precise in these days. So, we regret that error and making this correction now. But these declarations, Kaitlan, yesterday are just the beginning of a long process. They have to list these new rules online. There’s public comment period. Some of these decisions will go to court before anything really changes for the American people.
So, it’ll be interesting to see if Administrator Zeldin can explain how these moves, as he said in his video, will make driving your car cheaper or heating your home or running your business cheaper, when some of these are just allowing big companies to pollute more. So, this is all very early in the stages, as we know. And we’ll see how it plays out, Kaitlan.
