{"id":305677,"date":"2025-11-21T19:04:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/305677\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T19:04:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:04:54","slug":"pelosi-calls-trump-the-biggest-con-job-in-american-history-in-reply-to-climate-comment-nancy-pelosi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/305677\/","title":{"rendered":"Pelosi calls Trump \u2018the biggest con job in American history\u2019 in reply to climate comment | Nancy Pelosi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPresident Trump is the biggest con job in American history,\u201d said Nancy Pelosi<\/a>, the US speaker emerita, to reporters on Thursday while criticizing his anti-climate agenda.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/a> told the UN general assembly in September that the climate crisis was \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world\u201d. But he was \u201cprojecting\u201d, Pelosi said at a press conference. The meeting was convened by Democrats on the Senate committee on environment and public works to comment on the US\u2019s official absence from the United Nations Cop30<\/a> climate summit in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, where 195 countries are represented.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration refused to send a US delegation to the annual talks \u2013 a first in the history of the summit \u2013\u00a0after pulling the country from the United Nations Paris climate accord on his first day back in office in January.<\/p>\n

The sole federal representative to attend the summit was Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator, ranking member on the environment and public works committee and a longtime climate hawk.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump does not represent the United States \u2026 on matters related to climate,\u201d Whitehouse said at the press conference in Washington DC. \u201cHe represents the fossil fuel industry, and specifically his big billionaire fossil fuel donors when it comes to climate matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitehouse aimed to highlight Trump\u2019s ties to big oil at the climate talks in Brazil during his 60-hour stay last week. The administration refused him an official US badge for the conference, so he was forced to attend as part of a climate research non-profit\u2019s delegation.<\/p>\n

The problem of fossil fuel industry influence did not begin with Trump, Whitehouse noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about damn time we told this story truthfully with the villains in it: we wouldn\u2019t be where we were if the fossil fuel industry had not run a long and fraudulent campaign of climate denial,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we wouldn\u2019t be where we are if the fossil fuel industry had not, since Citizens United, used its power to spend unlimited dark money in politics \u2026 to prevent reasonable, sensible climate action from happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

New polling from the progressive polling non-profit Data for Progress, shared exclusively with the Guardian, shows that a strong majority of US voters, 65%, believe the US should undertake ambitious climate action even if other states do not. That includes majorities of Democrats and Independents at 85% and 63% respectively. And it includes a plurality, 47%, of Republicans.<\/p>\n

A majority of US voters \u2013 55% \u2013 also support a global phaseout of fossil fuels, while 54% of voters said the US should wind down fossil fuel usage by the century\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States is still very solid on climate action,\u201d Whitehouse said.<\/p>\n

Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, also spoke at the Thursday press conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s shameful that the Trump administration and the United States government chose not to be involved and engaged at the most recent Cop conference, essentially ceding leadership on this issue in the world to our rival China,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pelosi, who recently said she will retire at the end of her term, said she wanted to \u201cassociate herself\u201d with Jeffries\u2019 remarks, noting that the first UN climate summit she attended was in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur delegation in this was led by Senator Al Gore and while we were there, he made one of the most spectacular save the planet speeches you ever heard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After the speech, Gore was nowhere to be found because \u201che was called away by Bill Clinton to ask if he wanted to be vice-president of the United States\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s dismantling of public education, refusal to take on gun violence, and his environmental record mean he is uniquely bad for young people, Pelosi said. \u201cDonald Trump is the worst president of the United States for America\u2019s children, the worst president America\u2019s children have ever had,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPresident Trump is the biggest con job in American history,\u201d said Nancy Pelosi, the US speaker emerita, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-305677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}