Although the national coverage is spotty, protests are still happening against the Dakota Access Pipeline construction in North Dakota. Jordan Chariton of The Young Turks (and also Mediaite!) has been out there for months talking to the protesters, who describe themselves as water protectors. Yesterday, he appeared on KVLY to talk to anchor Chris Berg, who is best known nationally as the guy who made “appalling” comments about people of color when the 2015 Oscar nominations were revealed and tore into Democrats for not wanting to appear on his show. Locally, he’s the news anchor who was outed by a North Dakota politics blog for having a Donald Trump bobblehead sitting on his desk.

Anyway, Monday, Chariton did what the Midwestern anchor says Democratic reps will not: he appeared on-air with Berg. Moreover, he came ready to do some serious battle on the segment, which was explicitly framed as a debate.

Berg, like many North Dakotans, immediately brought up the fact that the water protectors have been living in camps that are now being widely reported on as ecohazards. Local news outlets in that state have, in fact, doubled down on coverage of that element of the camps in an effort to highlight what they see as the hypocrisy of contaminating water with camp waste while protesting the possible contamination of water by an oil pipeline.

Chariton countered, “Chris, I find it very interesting. You and the governor and all these North Dakota folks, selective concern now about the water protectors, about the environment. It seems that this whole time, you know, a pipeline going under the longest river in America, no environmental concern at all, but now you’re very worried about the camp clean-up.”

When Berg tried to interrupt, Chariton dismissed him by saying, “No, no. I’m not finished.”

Chariton went on to lambast the Fargo-based anchor for parroting the talking points of the government while not actually going out to the camp. Berg argued back that the basis for the protests is unsound, as any pipelines that have leaked before have been “old.”

Watch above to see Chariton tell Berg he is lying to his viewers and to see what happened when the TYT host tried to bring up instances of reported police brutality at the sites. The whole thing is worth a watch.

[image via screengrab]

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