The news that the horrific Palisades Fire in Los Angeles was probably caused by an arsonist contradicted all the dramatic climate-change proclamations tied to the disaster. But the evening broadcast networks took it a step further and buried the breaking news that the accused arsonist is an eco-extremist.
While ABC, CBS and NBC did cover the news on October 8 that the alleged arsonist was apprehended, they completely failed to report that a revealing motive had been found through the suspect’s social media a day later.
For example, CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson even claimed during an October 8 broadcast that “officials have given no possible motive.” There’s been a whole string of network “news” stories failing to find a leftist motive that has become obvious to anyone outside the liberal bubble.
Gee, maybe his social media posts could give everyone somewhat of a clue, right?
A New York Post exclusive reported October 9 on alleged arsonist Jonathan Rinderknecht’s social posts, which were apparently laced with anti-Trump screeds and climate-change claptrap. Rinderknecht “regularly took to Facebook to share posts about eco-apocalypses, mocking President Trump and his supporters, and pushing people to become vegans,” Post reporters Anthony Blair and Alex Oliveira noted.
One article Rinderknecht shared online, per the Post, “‘Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration,’ from ProPublica – even included a thumbnail showing wildfires raging across a California hillside neighborhood.” The newspaper summarized that it was “eerily – and ironically – similar” to the grotesque crime Rinderknecht is accused of committing.
None of this was newsy enough course to the typical media talking heads at ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, which all ignored the entire story during their October 9 broadcasts. Given the insane plot twist from the Palisades fire being treated as another fingerprint of climate change to the whole thing being started by a supposed climate change nutjob, no wonder ABC, CBS and NBC tried to pretend it didn’t exist.
NBC Nightly News, however, conducted a pathetic rehab job to deflect backlash from the public over Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) tone-deaf comments saying “every day gets better for us” in regards to the tumultuous, ongoing government shutdown.”
Defend leftists when they stick their foot in their mouths? Yeah that’s some hard-hitting news coverage (sarcasm). But how about sharing the emerging facts on the climate change-obsessed suspect who destroyed many people’s lives because of his affinity for inferno porn? Nah, we can just skip that, right ABC, CBS and NBC? But what more can you expect from what’s basically the equivalent of Democrat TV?
WATCH: The only legacy newscast mention of Schumer’s “every day gets better for us” is a rehab job by NBC pic.twitter.com/3HfRb7HxC7
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 10, 2025
Rinderknecht allegedly “hiked to the hills above Los Angeles and started a brushfire. Prosecutors allege that blaze was never fully extinguished and six days later it sprang back to life,” according to Blair and Oliveira. The fire then proceeded to torch close to 24,000 acres, kill 12 people, and decimate “over 7,000 homes and businesses with damages worth about $150 billion.” Other online activity, according to Blair and Oliveira, involved “creating disturbing AI-generated images showing cities burning with masses of people fleeing the destruction, according to prosecutors.”
Blair and Oliveira further reported that Rinderknecht “allegedly filmed the blaze he first set, reported it to authorities, and then returned to the site to watch firefighters battle it, according to prosecutors.” One would think his social media posts profiling his extremist behavior as a baseline for a possible motive would be of interest to the American people, let alone to the Californians who suffered enormously because of his alleged actions.
The leftist media will clearly continue to shield the fanatics within their ideological ranks — and the greater the human damage, the more they run away from it.
