Pelosi calls Trump ‘the biggest con job in American history’ in reply to climate comment | Nancy Pelosi
“President Trump is the greatest fraud in American history,” Nancy Pelosi, the President Emeritus of the United States, told reporters on Thursday, while criticizing his anti-climate agenda.
Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly in September that the climate crisis was “the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the world.” But he was “planning,” Pelosi said at a news conference. The meeting was called by Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to comment on the United States’ official absence from the United Nations’ Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, where 195 countries are represented.
The Trump administration refused to send a U.S. delegation to the annual negotiations — a first in the summit’s history — after withdrawing the country from the United Nations’ Paris climate accord on its first day back in office in January.
The only federal representative at the summit was Sheldon Whitehouse, a senator from Rhode Island, a ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and a longtime climate advocate.
“Trump does not represent the United States … on climate issues,” Whitehouse said at the press conference in Washington DC. “He represents the fossil fuel industry, and specifically its big billionaire fossil fuel donors, when it comes to climate issues. »
Whitehouse aimed to highlight Trump’s ties to big oil during climate negotiations in Brazil during his 60-hour stay last week. After the administration denied him an official U.S. badge for the conference, he was forced to attend as part of a delegation from a nonprofit climate research organization.
The problem of fossil fuel industry influence did not start with Trump, Whitehouse noted.
“It’s high time we told this story honestly with the bad guys: We wouldn’t be where we are if the fossil fuel industry hadn’t waged a long and fraudulent campaign of climate denial,” he said. “And we wouldn’t be where we are if the fossil fuel industry hadn’t, since Citizens United, used its power to spend unlimited dark money on politics…to prevent reasonable, sensible climate action from happening.”
A new poll from the progressive non-profit Data for Progress, shared exclusively with the Guardian, shows that a strong majority of US voters, 65%, think the US should take ambitious climate action even if other states fail to do so. This includes majorities of Democrats and independents, at 85% and 63%, respectively. And it includes a majority, 47%, of Republicans.
A majority of American voters – 55% – also support a global phase-out of fossil fuels, while 54% of voters believe the United States should reduce its use of fossil fuels by the end of the century.
“The United States remains very strong on climate action,” Whitehouse said.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, also spoke at Thursday’s press conference.
“It is shameful that the Trump administration and the United States government chose not to get involved and not engage at the last Cop conference, essentially ceding leadership on this global issue to our rival China,” he said.
Pelosi, who recently announced she would retire at the end of her term, said she wanted to “associate herself” with Jeffries’ remarks, noting that the first U.N. climate summit she attended was in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
“Our delegation was led by Senator Al Gore and while we were there he gave one of the most spectacular speeches for saving the planet that you have ever heard,” she said.
After the speech, Gore was nowhere to be seen because “Bill Clinton called him to ask if he wanted to be vice president of the United States,” she added.
Trump’s dismantling of public education, his refusal to address gun violence and his environmental record mean he is particularly bad for young people, Pelosi said. “Donald Trump is the worst president of the United States for American children, the worst president American children have ever had,” she said.
