In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese. In last night’s presidential debate, he gaslit the entire world by denying he ever said that. What the Republican nominee seems to repeatedly forget is that anyone with an internet connection can fact-check his nonsense and discover that, for someone who doesn’t believe in global warming, he sure has made some big investments in protecting his seaside properties from it.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
Last night’s first presidential debate featured an unprepared, rambling, and interrupting Donald – “vintage Trump,” as one CNN correspondent called it – bumbling his way through failing to explain his birther movement gusto, claiming Black and Hispanic Americans are “living in hell,” and bragging how he is “smart” for not paying federal income taxes, all the while complaining that NATO partners don’t pay their “fair share.” Yet, the most easily debunked falsehood that tumbled from his mouth could be that he “did not” claim climate change is a hoax perpetuated by China.
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His tweet from 2012 is, miraculously, still up on his Twitter profile for anyone to see, despite claims that his campaign was desperately trying to delete it during the debate. A writer shared an image that the original tweet “is no longer available,” yet this may have been due to a bug. It was a believable misdeed, however, seeing as he did delete the following tweet on September 11 of last year: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.”
It is mind-boggling how anyone over the age of 5 can believe if they deny something hard enough, it will be as if it never happened. But even more revealing of Trump’s magical thinking, deceitful tactics, and disdainful opinion of the American public’s attention span is the fact that, despite being a climate change denier, he has applied for permission to construct a coastal wall to protect his Ireland golf course from “global warming and its effects.” According to Politico, the application cites an Irish government study that predicts a rising rate of erosion: “the existing erosion rate will continue and worsen, due to sea level rise, in the next coming years, posing a real and immediate risk to most of the golf course frontage and assets.” His Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago estate is also being slowly swallowed by the sea.
The Washington Post reports, “He’s tweeted 101 times about global warming, according to a new archive of all of Trump’s tweets from 2009 to the present. The vast majority of those tweets claim in some way that global warming is a hoax.” While he is calling verifiable and catastrophic climate change “bullshit,” “a total hoax,” and “psuedoscience,” he is simultaneously investing in ways to shelter his property from its effects. It’s safe to assume, however, that if he were confronted with these inconsistencies he would reply, “No, I’m not.”
Via The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Politico
Images via Flickr
