On Monday night's episode of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, viewers were treated to a familiar ritual in left-wing media: the exploitation of tragedy to advance a partisan agenda. This time, the devastating floods in Texas served not as a moment of national unity, but as a launchpad for attacking political opponents with science as the supposed casualty.
Maddow’s conversation with meteorologist Eric Holthaus was less an interview and more a political indictment dressed up as weather commentary. Holthaus, a frequent contributor to progressive publications like The Guardian, wasted no time blaming the Trump administration for climate-related disasters, claiming it had "systematically undercut science."
Missing from the conversation? Any acknowledgment that disaster preparedness and environmental policy were shared responsibilities across local, state, and federal levels, something that the large state of Texas had often struggled to meet.
Maddow's leading question was a perfect example of that (click "expand" to read):
MADDOW: The rescue and recovery operations in Texas are still underway. It is heartbreaking. It's also, I think, increasingly infuriating that we're in this situation. Is it fair to say that we are taking action as a country to basically lessen our readiness, to lessen our ability to protect people and warn people in the face of this kind of disaster?
HOLTHAUS: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately that's exactly right. I think that what the Trump administration has been doing is systematically undercutting science. I mean, let's take a step back. Here we are in the middle of the most severe problem our species has ever faced in climate change. And that problem is accelerating. Emissions are accelerating, and this administration has really decided to just say, “nope, we're not going to pay attention to that and we'll hope that everyone can, you know, fend for themselves.” And it's really, really infuriating as someone who's been covering this beat for 20 years now. I have little kids, you know, like I wake up at night and am just worried for, you know, when's– where's the next flood going to be? We haven't entered hurricane season yet and it's just it's going to be bad and it's heartbreaking.
To pin this tragedy on federal budget cuts was lazy, politically motivated reporting.
The National Weather Service in Texas has said themselves that the loss of life was a result of the amount of rainfall in addition to the nocturnal timing of the storm, a combination that proved to be the culprit in what made this flood so deadly.
But this wasn't the first time that Texas' emergency response to weather was lacking. In 2021, Texas suffered an intense winter storm that took out the state’s power grid, stripping millions of Texans of electricity and heating. The death toll for that storm rose past 200, and Texas’ emergency weather preparedness was also to blame then, not the White House.
The exchange made one thing painfully clear: when progressives talk about disasters, they don’t just want action they want someone to blame. Even in the face of a natural disaster that demands cooperation and compassion, Maddow and her guest prioritized partisanship. Budget cuts to federal agencies became a stand-in for a broader narrative: that conservatives were anti-science, anti-fact, and anti-compassion.
But that narrative conveniently ignored the complexity of government funding, the realities of bureaucratic obstacles, and the actual science around weather forecasting. Suggesting that fewer positions at NOAA directly led to a specific weather-related tragedy was both irresponsible and unprovable. But that didn’t stop MSNBC from implying it.
Holthaus even asserted that the reason for the government budget cuts was because our officials think they can stop weather events from occurring. "I don't really understand any reason for that other than this idea that, you know, if you stop predicting something, that it won't happen– which obviously is a fairy tale,” he declared.
What viewers witnessed was not journalism but a carefully scripted performance meant to stir outrage and assign moral blame. Holthaus spoke of losing sleep over his children’s future, a sentiment any parent can sympathize with. But the implication that his anxiety was caused by a particular political party was emblematic of the emotional manipulation that increasingly defines mainstream media.
That kind of coverage hasn’t helped the public understand science; it has weaponized it. And when media institutions like MSNBC portray scientific funding as a zero-sum battle between good and evil, they not only distort the facts but sow fear among the public.
When the public needed news that reported on natural disasters with facts and empathy, they got partisan talking points disguised as concern to meet an agenda.
The entire transcript is below. Click "expand" to read.
MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show
July 7, 2025
9:52:24 PM ET
RACHEL MADDOW: Joining us now is Eric Holthaus. He's a meteorologist and the founder of Currently Weather Service. He's been doing some frankly harrowing reporting on the collision of budget cuts and climate change and science for The Guardian newspaper. His latest article for The Guardian is titled “Texas Floods Reveal Limitations of Disaster Forecasting Under Climate Crisis.” Mr. Holthaus, thank you very much for joining us. I really appreciate it.ERIC HOLTHAUS: Yeah, thank you so much. It's a real honor to be here.
MADDOW: The rescue and recovery operations in Texas are still underway. It is heartbreaking. It's also, I think, increasingly infuriating that we're in this situation. Is it fair to say that we are taking action as a country to basically lessen our readiness, to lessen our ability to protect people and warn people in the face of this kind of disaster?
HOLTHAUS: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately that's exactly right. I think that what the Trump administration has been doing is systematically undercutting science. I mean, let's take a step back. Here we are in the middle of the most severe problem our species has ever faced in climate change. And that problem is accelerating. Emissions are accelerating, and this administration has really decided to just say, “Nope, we're not going to pay attention to that and we'll hope that everyone can, you know, fend for themselves.” And it's really, really infuriating as someone who's been covering this beat for 20 years now. I have little kids, you know, like I wake up at night and am just worried for, you know, when's– where's the next flood going to be? We haven't entered hurricane season yet and it's just it's going to be bad and it's heartbreaking.
MADDOW: I feel like one of the things that we've all had to learn in these last few years is that climate change means climate chaos. It means weather chaos, and it means unpredictability when it comes to dealing with severe weather events of all kinds. One of the things that I think we're looking to science for right now, in terms of resilience, is to try to sort of increase predictability, to try to increase what we understand about how weather goes haywire in this type of climate crisis that we're in. Is that the kind of science that is being abandoned or turned off by this administration?
HOLTHAUS: Right. I mean, there's one thing with the National Weather Service cuts. So, you know, the Austin-San Antonio office, which has responsibility for Kerr County in this case, was missing its Warning Coordination Meteorologist as you outlined. And that is the person who coordinates with emergency officials as a representative of meteorologists employed by the federal government to manage that disaster. And, yes, they had enough people on hand during the storm to cover that role. But as you said, you lost someone with decades of experience for no reason. And systematically now throughout the administration, you know, as we're going through this budget process the last couple of months, the parts of NOAA, parts of the parent of the National Weather Service that have been cut most are the researchers. So, the people that are working to make our science, moving it forward, those positions are being cut. You know, the Environmental Modeling Center, which is based in Maryland, their only job is to improve the weather models that every single person in the United States, every weather app, and anytime you get a weather forecast, these are the models that that forecast comes from. And those people have been fired. And it's just like, I don't really understand any reason for that other than this idea that, you know, if you stop predicting something, then it won't happen– which obviously is a fairy tale.
MADDOW: Well, yeah, it doesn't even count as magic, bad magic to even try that. Eric Holthaus, founder and Chief Meteorologist at Currently Weather Service. Thank you for being with us, again, in the midst of this still ongoing disaster. We look forward to having you back to talk about talk about this more in the future. Eric, thanks.