Fixing Climate Change With the Mayor of Moscow’s Wife

We are on the record here that watching presidential debates is probably time better spent doing almost anything else, and also that asking Donald Trump questions about climate change makes the phrase “a fool’s errand” seem a tad underbaked. And yet here we are, the morning after Trump took a sound beating at the hands of Vice President Kamala Harris, staring down the former president’s answer to the very basic and broad question: “What would you do to fight climate change?”

Harris answered first, noting the rising tide of climate change-related disasters and the insurance hits homeowners can see as a result, the hefty investments in clean energy the Biden administration has made, and the glut of manufacturing jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act and other policy maneuvers. She finished with the goal of opening new auto manufacturing plants to face the challenge, “not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.”

Her opponent certainly said some words, that’s for sure. Here it is in full, because when it comes to an issue as complex and far-reaching as climate change, it is important to let policy makers and leaders have some space to lay out their vision:

Donald Trump: That didn’t happen under Donald Trump. Let me just tell you, they lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs this last month. It’s going — they’re all leaving. They’re building big auto plants in Mexico. In many cases owned by China. They’re building these massive plants, and they think they’re going to sell their cars into the United States because of these people. What they have given to China is unbelievable. But we’re not going to let that. We’ll put tariffs on those cars so they can’t come into our country. Because they will kill the United Auto Workers and any auto worker, whether it’s in Detroit or South Carolina or any other place. What they’ve done to business and manufacturing in this country is horrible. We have nothing because they refuse — you know, Biden doesn’t go after people because supposedly China paid him millions of dollars. He’s afraid to do it. Between him and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder why is he so loyal to this one, that one Ukraine, China? Why is he? Why did he get 3 1/2 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? Why did he get — why did she pay him 3 1/2 million dollars? This is a crooked administration, and they’re selling our country down the tubes.

I can feel the temperature dropping already.