He’s going to pretend he cares about the environment and climate change. Democrats can’t let him get away with it.
This piece from a while back from Greg Sargent reports on their lame attempts.
The New York Times reports that internal polling for Trump’s campaign revealed that his environmental record is a key obstacle to winning millennials and suburban women. Those demographics, of course, helped drive the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018 amid a sizable national popular vote win. According to a senior administration official who reviewed the polling, Trump might not win voters who feel strongly about climate change, but it showed that a certain type of moderate who likes the economy might feel okay about Trump if she is persuaded he’s being “responsible” on environmental issues.
Hence Trump’s latest speech, in which he claimed that he has made it a “top priority” to preserve “the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet.” Trump actually mouthed the words that we have a “profound obligation to protect America’s extraordinary blessings for the next generation and many generations, frankly, to come.”
But as New York Times fact checker Linda Qiu documents, the speech was full of distortions. Trump absurdly took credit for environmental improvements secured under his predecessors. He also misleadingly claimed the United States is leading other countries in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, when in fact our reduction as a percentage of overall emissions — a much more meaningful metric — trails many others.
In reality, Trump has sought to dismantle multiple efforts to combat global warming. His Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing a new rule to replace former president Barack Obama’s effort to curb emissions from coal plants, which will undermine progress, as well as another one rolling back tailpipe emissions standards. Trump is pulling out of the Paris climate deal. Trump is doing all this, even though a comprehensive assessment by over a dozen federal agencies — within his own administration — concluded that global warming poses a dire future threat to U.S. interests. Trump dismissed this finding by saying: “I don’t believe it.”
Trump offered condolences to Australia, which is more than he did for California. But then he forgot he was supposed to care. He tweeted this over the week-end:
It’s important that some Super PAC or Bloomberg or the Democratic party or someone makes this the subject of a relentless ad campaign. He is a menace when it comes to climate change and we are starting to see some movement among the public. We can’t afford to waste any more time.