September 27, 2016

Did Trump Call Global Warming a Chinese Hoax? (Yes. And Tonight He Lied About It.)

“I do not say that.”

According to Donald Trump, Donald Trump never supported the Iraq war; he never called pregnancy an “inconvenience” for employers; and he certainly never—ever—called climate change a Chinese hoax.

Trump, you’ll be shocked to learn, wasn’t exactly telling the truth. Let’s focus on the climate claim, which you can watch in the video above.

During Monday night’s presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said: “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real. I think science is real.”

“I did not, I did not,” countered Trump. “I do not say that.”

Clinton is correct. Here’s what Trump tweeted in 2012:

Trump has since suggested that this comment was a joke—a hilarious one, no doubt. Regardless, Trump has repeatedly called global warming a “hoax.” On Fox News in 2014, for instance:

And on Twitter:

More MotherJones reporting on Climate Desk

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

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Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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