In the lead segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, host Bill Whitaker narrated a piece praising the work of California Governor Jerry Brown in standing up to President Trump on climate change. “Our country is divided between red states and blue states, a division that has intensified since the election of President Donald Trump,” he began, noting how the blue states were part of the resistance. “Most prominently, California, the country's bluest and most populous state, led by Governor Jerry Brown.”

Whitaker highlighted how Brown was taking the Trump administration to court “over health care, immigration, and air quality.” “But nothing raises more righteous passion in Jerry brown than the issue of climate change. He castigates the President for denying the science and aggravating a problem Governor Brown says is causing California to burn,” he pontificated.

The segment included clips of Brown fusing his climate change alarmism with religious undertones. “If he sounds like a Jesuit seminarian, it's because he was one, years ago,” Whitaker noted. “Now, he's a climate missionary, traveling the world, preaching the gospel of renewable energy. At the Vatican; in China, where President Xi Jinping discussed collaborating with California on cutting greenhouse gases.”

He also touted how Brown and Michael Bloomberg were undermining U.S. leadership by going to foreign climate summits claiming to represent the parts of the U.S. who say the Trump administration doesn’t speak for them. An act that would probably result in calls for hearings if it was done during a Democratic administration.

After glorifying Brown’s work on climate change, Whitaker touted what his subject had done to California. “California is booming. Under Brown, it has grown from the 9th largest economy in the world, to the 6th. It's now bigger than France, with a budget surplus of more than $7 billion,” he claimed.

“You cut the budget. You raised taxes. These days, that sounds like a prescription for political suicide,” he quipped to Brown. But Whitaker never mentioned the mass exodus of California residents and businesses seeking to live and do business in low tax states such as Texas.

The most critical part of puff piece was when Whitaker simply brushed over the state’s exploding homeless crisis. “But California's economic success has come at a cost. Housing prices are through the roof. So are the ranks of the homeless. A quarter of the country's homeless live in California,” he said. There was no mention of the San Diego hepatitis A outbreak which was caused by the homeless defecating in the streets. And it appeared that a separate outbreak was set to hit the state’s capital.

As for covering Brown’s dissenters, Whitaker only noted (with no explanation) how “California Republicans say Brown's tax hikes are irresponsible.” He then inexplicably shifted gears to talk about how California was more inclusive than the rest of “Trump’s America.” “In Trump's America, Jerry Brown's California seems far out on the frontier. California doesn't look like the rest of the country. Minorities now are the majority of the population,” he chided.

Whitaker wrapped up his Jerry Brown love-fest by fawning over the Governor’s retirement plans:

Their plan is to retire here, to this ranch, in a golden valley north of Sacramento. They're building their dream ranch house-- with solar panels, of course. (…) He told us he's going out at his peak, stepping away from the fray, on land his great-grandfather settled in the 1860s. He said he intends to be a modest rancher. He's going to unplug and unwind. It's off the grid, and way off the beaten path.

Transcript below: