If you’ve ever wanted to be reassured about anything when it comes to Donald Trump, anything at all, don’t read the transcript of his interview with the New York Times. While the Times may have released a handful of semi-reasonable sounding quotes from the interview, the full text reveals a terrifying lack of understanding of everything—including possibly English.
It also reveals that Trump’s statements on climate change are, of course, just hot air.
“I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people on the other side of that issue who are, think, don’t even …”
And so on. Including this gem of a sequence:
“I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about.”
No. It wasn’t Geneva. And no they didn’t get caught, they got hacked. And it wasn’t “terrible” except in the sense that the scientists were totally vindicated.
Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
But of course, despite all his “open mind” talk, Trump’s mind is already made up that climate change is “a bunch of bunk.”
But the man who claimed numerous times that climate change is “an expensive hoax,” “a concept … created by and for the Chinese” and “bullshit” still believes it is “a bunch of bunk,” according to his incoming chief of staff, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus.
“As far as this issue on climate change, the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it was, look, he’ll have an open mind about it. But he has his default position which, most of it is a bunch of bunk,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.”
He’ll be completely open … but “most of it is a bunch of bunk.” Which other people might not think of as exactly “open.” But it fits right in with the openness Trump has displayed in putting a climate-denier in charge of his environmental policy, and with his plans for the EPA.
Trump has also suggested gutting the agency altogether.
And wrecking the EPA is just step one in Trump’s open mind of bunk.
To head the Department of the Interior, which oversees the national parks system and the preservation of endangered species, leading candidates include Sarah “Drill Baby Drill” Palin and oil executive Harold Hamm. And Trump’s adviser on space policy wants to end NASA’s climate change research programs.
Expect a space policy “pivot” that plans to look at all the planets … except Earth. Because if you close down the EPA and stop NASA from taking a peek at how things are going, then who is going to contradict Trump when he cites an InfoWars piece on how any warming you feel is really just a plot from the lizard men?
But you’ll be happy to know that, just on the off chance 99.9 percent of the world’s scientists are right and Donald Trump is wrong, Trump's golf courses are safe from sea-level rise.
“Some will be even better because actually like Doral is a little bit off … so it’ll be perfect.”
Well, if it makes the back nine at Doral perfect, then all the misery, expense, wars and deaths will have been worth it. But just in case:
Donald Trump says he is “not a big believer in global warming.” He has called it “a total hoax,” “bullshit” and “pseudoscience.”
But he is also trying to build a sea wall designed to protect one of his golf courses from “global warming and its effects.”
Build that wall, Donald. Build that wall.