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FLASHBACK: Donald Trump and his hair join the climate zombies

In recent polls, Donald Trump has vaulted to the top of the GOP presidential contender list by becoming a ‘birther’. Amazingly, he “might be serious” in his candidacy, Salon warned yesterday.

So it’s worth remembering that before he punched the birther ticket, he joined the climate denial team — which is arguably more important for a”credible” GOP nominee. After all, most GOP contenders aren’t foolish enough to be open ‘birthers’, questioning Obama’s legitimacy to be president based on no evidence whatsoever (see The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers).

But pretty much every serious GOP contender is now a climate zombie (see Tim Pawlenty: “Every one of us” running for president has flip-flopped on climate change). And Trump certainly has the hair for zombie-dom, if nothing else.

Anyway, here’s the flashback to February 2010:

Donald Trump and his hair assert that recent snow means “the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore,” reports the NY Post, the Daily Mail of America.

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Activists are already saying this is the biggest break for the climate since Sarah Palin became the top conservative spokesperson on the science. Anti-science disinformers suggest that it’s really more important that Trump’s hair has joined their cause, since it gets more attention these days and has, arguably, been more successful than Trump himself recently.

In a much-heralded speech last week, Bill Gates noted that if scientists could just figure out some miraculous way to harness the static electricity from rubbing Trump’s hair, the entire climate crisis could be solved. Nathan Myrhvold was rumored to have already patented the idea.

Less seriously, this is what the Post reported Trump said, accompanied by his hair:

Donald Trump is not a big believer in global warming. “With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore,” the tycoon told members of his Trump National Golf Club in Westchester in a recent speech.

“Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.” The crowd of 500 stood up and cheered.

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Who could possibly disagree with Trump’s assertion that “China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity” (see Lindsey Graham: “Every day that we delay trying to find a price for carbon is a day that China uses to dominate the green economy”)? Stand up and cheer for that!

Of course, the Donald can’t be expect to know that this is in fact the warmest winter in the satellite record. Nor can USA Today, which just reprinted his comments.

NOTE: In the NASA dataset, the winter of 2009–2010 was the second warmest on record.

But then the Donald ain’t a science guy. He’s a very religious man, if you didn’t know. Wikipedia reports:

Trump has been caught in the 2008 financial crisis as sales for his Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago have been lagging and he failed to pay a $40m loan to Deutsche Bank in December. Arguing that the crisis is an Act of God, he evoked a clause in the contract to not pay the loan and initiated a countersuit asserting his image has been damaged. Deutsche Bank has in turn noted in court that ‘Trump is no stranger to overdue debt’ and that he has twice previously filed for bankruptcy with respect to his casino operations.

On February 17, 2009 Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Mr Trump having stated on February 13 that he would resign from the board.

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Now I understand Trump’s argument. Nothing is human-made, not the financial crisis, not global warming. On the other hand, if the financial crisis is an act of God, then so is Trump’s financial “success,” which may be the funniest notion of all.

Seriously, Trump is a very religious man. Salon reposts part of his interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network where he explains that he gets “sent Bibles by a lot of people” and, when asked where they are, he explains “Actually, we keep them at a certain place. A very nice place.”

And that’s where they should keep Trump. A very nice place.

Like Salon, I actually thought until a few days ago that Trump was only doing this for publicity for “The Celebrity Apprentice.” I even joked that perhaps he was doing a sendup of a Republican candidacy. But he has gone beyond satire now. Yes, he has become every bit as ‘serious’ a GOP candidate as, say, Gingrich or Palin or Pawlenty or Romney.

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