During his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump decided to reinvent himself yet again, this time as an environmental scientist. From one of the world’s most important diplomatic stages, he declared climate change to be “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Fresh off his recent claim that Tylenol causes autism, a medical theory that exists only in his imagination, Trump now seems eager to add “climatologist” to his ever-expanding list of honorary titles. Having already moonlighted as a medical professional, he’s moved on to lecturing the planet about climate science, with the same confidence he applies to campaign rallies and reality television.
To back up his bold dismissal of climate change, Trump dusted off a decades-old prediction from a UN official who in 1989 warned that entire nations could vanish within ten years due to rising seas. “Not happening,” Trump scoffed, presenting one failed timeline as definitive proof that the entire reality of climate change is a hoax. Elaborating on his half-baked theory, he continued:
“You know, it used to be global cooling. If you look back years ago, in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said, ‘global cooling will kill the world, we have to do something.’ Then they said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they could just call it climate change because that way they can’t miss.”
Mr. President, did you maybe forget to account for something called “scientific progress” when you made that statement? Ironically, in trying to dunk on climate scientists, he ended up defining the very concept he insists is a hoax. “It’s climate change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, it is climate change.” He’s absolutely right, just not in the way he thinks.
But Trump couldn’t keep his accidental “smarty pants” moment alive for long. He quickly veered back into familiar territory: name-calling. This time, the target was the global community of climatologists, whom he shamelessly dismissed as “stupid people” who had drained nations of their fortunes and left them with “no chance for success.”
“Climate change, no matter what happens, you’re involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions were made by the United Nations, and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people.”
Doubling down on his rejection of science, Trump urged countries to abandon what he branded “this green scam,” warning them “your country is going to fail” if they don’t follow through with his advice. Trump’s new favorite pastime, it seems, is propagating his opinions as global truths that have no logical or factual backing. And maybe that’s the real “con job.”
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