If you were shocked by Donald Trump’s speech announcing the immediate withdrawal of the US from the Paris climate agreement, you should read this piece by David Roberts. Here is the introduction.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump gave a speech announcing that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
It is a remarkable address, in its own way, in that virtually every passage contains something false or misleading. The sheer density of bullshit is almost admirable, from a performance art perspective. Trump even managed to get in some howlers that had nothing to do with climate change. He started by citing an act of terrorism in Manila that wasn’t terrorism. He said, “our tax bill is moving along in Congress,” but there’s no tax bill. And so forth.
A proper fact-check would run longer than the speech itself. To keep this quick, I’ve selected the top five deceptions.
A note: I’m not calling these “lies,” because that implies Trump knows they are false. It is far from clear that Trump understands anything about any of the issues at stake, or is even capable of forming stable beliefs as such ….
David Roberts, “The 5 biggest deceptions in Trump’s Paris climate speech“, Vox.com, 2 June 2017.
Seattle-based David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist Magazine, an online environmental publication.
Click on the link above for the full article. It is concise, and worth reading. The errors in Trump’s speech are so many, so gross, and so obvious, that it is hard to believe that this man is leader of the most important, most powerful nation in the world.
