Ever since President Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, reporters have been trying to get an answer to a simple question from a member of the administration: Does Trump believe climate change is real?
The latest to face the question is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning. Host Jake Tapper why the president had made the decision to exit the Paris agreement. Haley replied:
“What I will tell you is that the regulations from the Paris agreement were disadvantaging our companies. The jobs were not attainable as long as we had to live under those regulations. It wasn’t possible to meet the conditions under the Paris agreement.
“We’ve got a president who is going to watch out for the environment. The rest of the world wanted to tell us how to do it and we’re saying we will do it but under our terms.”
Laughing, Tapper reminded Haley:
“But, but, the standards were set by the United States for the United States.”
Oddly, Haley then said:
“No, the standards were set by President Obama.”
Tapper reminded the UN Ambassador:
“My point is that you said the world is imposing standards on the United States. President Obama — the president of the United States at the time — set the standards.”
Finally, Tapper directly confronted Haley with one of the patently ridiculous things Trump has said about climate change:
“But moving that aside for one second, I just want to be clear on this. You’re not willing to acknowledge that calling climate change a Chinese hoax is just a big box of crazy.”
Haley:
“President Trump believes the climate is changing, and he believes pollutants are part of that equation. That is the fact. That is where we are, that is where we stand.”
Then why doesn’t he just say so? Why this dissembling and evasion? Could it be because this president is so used to lying about everything that lying is now the default position of his entire administration?
This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org