John Podesta called Sen. Bernie Sanders a “doofus” in late 2015 for opposing the Paris climate change agreement, according to an email released Tuesday by WikiLeaks.
Neera Tanden, now the president of Center for American Progress, wrote to Podesta the day after nearly 200 countries adopted the language of the Paris agreement designed to combat climate change.
“I know it wouldn’t have happened [without] the China deal. My children and their future children thank you,” Tanden wrote on December 13, 2015. Obama negotiated an agreement in 2014 to get China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. China later joined the U.S. in officially committing to the Paris climate accord in September 2016.
“Thank you,” Podesta wrote back. “Can you believe that doofus Bernie Sanders attacked it?”
Sanders argued the day before the agreement was reached that it doesn’t go far enough, asserting that the “planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and this does not provide that.”
Tanden forwarded the message to her husband Ben Edwards and asked him how she should respond to Podesta’s message. He wrote up a lengthy pro-Clinton statement praising the accord as the “best realistic result” from the Paris negotiations, arguing that Republican “bozos” are “enemies of the state, enemies of the world” if they don’t support the climate pact.
“Now we can truly say that the Republicans are the only thing standing in the way of literally saving civilization. If they don’t cooperate then it is no longer hyperbole to say that they are truly enemies of the state, enemies of the world,” wrote Edwards, in the response he created for her to use. “I’m not naive enough to think that this is the solution, but just a new beginning. Too late? Yes, should have happened years ago. But finally, a plan for real action. I’m totally one hundred percent for Hillary [Clinton] because if any one of these bozos makes it to the White House, then we’ll have a revolution on our hands.”
Republicans have largely remained skeptical about the president’s policy promises to address climate change, and were critical of the U.S. entering the Paris accord. According to Scientific American, some argued that the agreements weren’t properly submitted to the Senate nor the international commitments realistic.
