Fox News is once again trying its hand at straight-up climate change denial, because it ain’t a real news network and nobody much cares if its hosts lie their well-paid asses off in ways that damage the country, the planet, or their own viewers’ chance of dodging a deadly illness or two. But were they always this bad at it?

It really does feel like the network is sinking to new lows, just in terms of raw laziness and pointless spite. Or maybe once you’ve decided to make B-tier conspiracy clowns the new face of your network, you’re just bound for those new lows—and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

On Fox News’ “The Five,” a daily show in which five talking heads sit around having opinions and being generally unpleasant in sort of a “five relatives waiting for your mom to finish cooking the turkey” sort of way, the Fivers were tasked with responding to President Joe Biden’s quite accurate assertion that climate change means we’re seeing more and worse natural disasters of late. The reason Fox bobbleheads would feel the need to turn that anodyne statement into the latest outrage is, as always, mysterious, but it boils down to conservatism’s contempt for book-learning in general, and for science specifically.

One of the five, however, was Jesse Watters, the host chosen to replace Tucker Carlson after the white nationalist conspiracy crank got too big for his britches and the Murdochs decided to show him who’s boss. And Jesse Watters got the gig by being … not a smart person.