June 16, 2015

13 Tweets That Definitively Prove That Donald Trump Is Not a Scientist

The reality TV star has a long history of firing the facts.

Alex Brandon/AP

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Donald Trump has announced he’s running for president! And while the real estate and necktie tycoon has no chance of actually winning, a White House bid would provide him with an even larger platform to spread his unique blend of anti-science nonsense. Here are some examples:

1. Climate Change. Trump contends that global warming is a “hoax.” Here he is on Fox News last year, citing extreme winter weather as evidence that climate scientists are wrong:

He has made similar comments on Twitter:

2. Vaccines and autism. Trump is an advocate for the completely baseless theory that vaccines can cause autism. “I’ve seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations, and a month later the child is no longer healthy,” he said on Fox in 2012. “It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world. And all of a sudden, they go in, they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? It’s like they’re pumping in—you know, it’s terrible, the amount. And they pump this into this little body. And then all of the sudden, the child is different a month later. And I strongly believe that’s it.”

Trump claims to be “all for vaccinations” but argues they should be given “separately and over an extended period of time, not all at one time”—an idea that medical experts reject. Back in September, Trump went on an extended Twitter rant about the issue:

3. Ebola. Last summer, Trump protested the decision to transport American health care workers who had been infected with Ebola in West Africa back to the United States for treatment:

As my colleague Tim McDonnell has explained, “Health care experts, meanwhile, insisted that the risk was minimal; the two patients Trump was talking about were ultimately brought back to the US and successfully treated without infecting anyone else.” What’s more, doctors even used blood donated by these survivors to help treat other Ebola patients. But Trump was soon back at it, accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of somehow covering up the dangers posed by the disease:

This story was updated following Trump’s announcement that he’s running for president.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

The December 31 deadline is closing in fast. To reach our $400,000 goal, we need readers who’ve never given before to join the ranks of MoJo donors. And we need our steadfast supporters to give again—any amount today.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do.

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