On Monday morning, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a passionate speech to the United Nations about climate change and the impact a lack of action would have on her and her peers.
“For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear,” she said in her fiery, defiant speech . “How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”
Later that day, conservative talking heads ripped into her.
On Fox News, conservative pundit Michael Knowles joined a panel with liberal commentator Christopher Hahn and host Harris Faulkner on The Story talking about Thunberg and her speech. Knowles wasted little time before attacking Thunberg.
“The climate hysteria movement is not about science. If it were about science it would be led by scientists rather than by politicians and a mentally ill Swedish child who is being exploited by her parents and by the international left,” he said.
Hahn immediately responded that Knowles should be ashamed of himself for attacking a child.
“Relax, skinny boy, I got this,” Hahn said. “OK? You’re attacking a child, you’re a grown man.”
But Knowles doubled down. “She is mentally ill. She has autism. She has obsessive-compulsive disorder. She has selective mutism. She had depression,” he said.
Autism is not a mental illness.
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After the program was over, Fox News issued an apology, calling Knowles’ comments “disgraceful.”
“The comment made by Michael Knowles who was a guest on The Story tonight, was disgraceful — we apologize to Greta Thunberg and our viewers,” said the network in a statement. According to The Hollywood Reporter , a spokesperson added that they wouldn’t be booking Knowles again.
Knowles’s attack was just one of many by conservatives in the media following her speech.
Ben Domenech, who is the editor-in-chief of The Federalist , tweeted that “We need to have a national conversation about the rising problem of arrogant teenage Swedes.”
Another Fox guest, Marc Morano, said that Thunberg spreads a “message of fear…There are reports now in Europe where kids are getting anti-anxiety medication, they believe they’re gonna die. It’s the Greta Effect. She’s causing and instilling fear in millions of kids.”
Later that night, Laura Ingraham used her show to draw a comparison between Thunberg and characters from ‘The Children of the Corn.’
“I can’t wait for Stephen King’s sequel, _Children of the Climate,” she said. For that, she earned the ire of no less than her own brother, who expressed his disappointment in her on Twitter, saying he can “no longer apologize for a sibling who I no longer recognize.”
h/t: BuzzFeed News , The Daily Beast