Dallas County judge: 'Bad policy' more than 'bad weather' caused Texas energy woes

Battered by severe winter weather, Texas has been suffering extensive power outages in many reasons unprepared for the cold snap. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins discussed Texas' energy woes with MSNBC's Katie Tur on Tuesday — and he didn't hesitate to tell her how "dire" the situation is.

Tur asked Jenkins, "Have you gotten word on when the power is going to be back on?" — to which he responded, "Our best hope is that we will get a lot of our people back on sometime tonight, but we've got another storm coming in that's going to hit Texas pretty hard late tonight and early tomorrow morning. The situation is dire and very unpredictable."

Jenkins, discussing his conversations with energy company CEOs in Texas, continued, "There's a lot of unpredictability out there because there's so many pieces that are broken."

When Tur noted how "hard" Texas has been hit by severe winter storms, Jenkins responded, "The storms that hit us, though, hit us with the decisions that governors made over the last ten years. Bad weather is predictable, and bad policy has a consequence when bad things happen."