President Trump attacked the Green New Deal Tuesday, claiming the progressive plan to fight climate change “might be a bigger hoax” than the Russian investigation.
“The Green New Deal is a hoax like the hoax I just went through,” Trump said during a speech promoting a liquefied natural gas export facility in Louisiana. “I’m not sure, it might even be a bigger one. And mine was pretty big.”
Trump told the audience of energy industry workers that if the Green New Deal were implemented, “everybody in this room gets fired” because backers of the plan “don’t like clean, beautiful natural gas.”
“Everybody go home, you just lost your jobs,” Trump said.
The Green New Deal calls for quickly eliminating the use of fossil fuels and achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, as well as for a federal jobs guarantee and universal healthcare.
Trump’s criticism came after supporters of the Green New Deal hosted a rally Monday night to pressure Democratic presidential candidates to not settle for “middle ground” policies to mitigate climate change.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who headlined the rally, said Republicans are spreading misinformation about the Green New Deal because they fear climate change is a losing issue for the GOP.
“The reason why you hear constant disinformation about the Green New Deal is because they know how vulnerable they are,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “If it really was just a silly little fairy tale, they would have just let it rock. But they know the knowledge and energy that is behind this.”
[Opinion: The Green New Deal is about power, not the planet]
