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As wildfires raged across the West, causing dozens of deaths, destroying property and polluting the air with smoke, Trump abruptly shut down an official who warned that climate change was fueling the flames, saying the weather would soon begin to “cool down.” Even by his own standards, it was one of the president’s most shocking comments on global warming, which he had previously referred to as a “hoax.”
Meanwhile, new reports emerged of the president’s spinners trying to cook up the facts about the pandemic, which he misled the nation about and which will soon claim its 200,000th American in part as a result. Trump continued to circumvent epidemiological guidelines by cramming people into closed events that risk spreading Covid-19, exacerbating disbelief and extreme frustration among medical experts. At a Latino outreach event, the president was the only person in a packed room who was socially estranged, granting himself the protection that his campaign stops deny attendees.
‘I don’t think science knows’
These were just the last few times that a president harboring bizarre theories about health, the environment, and other topics, often drawn from conservative media conspiracy theorists, has turned away from leading science and experience in the world that solidified America’s global leadership.
For years, Trump has rejected the advice of his own intelligence services, preferring the propaganda of the US adversary Russia. He pushed for discredited therapies for Covid-19, such as hydroxychloroquine, which federal regulators rejected. Your Environmental Protection Agency has sent a wrecking ball through regulations aimed at saving the planet. It withdrew from the Paris climate accord to make room for its adoption of fossil fuel polluters and has overturned fuel efficiency standards for cars.
But Trump’s visit to California for a briefing on the fires that have consumed more than 3 million acres in a record year and also devastated other Western states was perhaps his most impressive climate change intervention yet.
Trump doubled down on his theory that the lack of rake of forest floors was responsible for creating powder keg conditions. He cited an anonymous foreign leader who he claimed said they had mitigated the “exploding trees” problem by managing forest soils.
Trump has no time for that science. After California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the need to clear more brush, he also asked the president to “respect” the scientific consensus that “climate change is real.”
When another local official told Trump it was time to get “our head out of the sand” relying on the excuse of forest management, the president swooped in.
“It’s going to start to get cooler. Just watch,” Trump responded.
“I wish science would agree with you,” replied the official.
“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said, closing the official.
The exchange was a blatant example of how the president simply discards any information that doesn’t fit his preconceived idea of a problem. While many of Trump’s views seem misinformed and not shaped by the federal government’s nearly limitless resources, there is also clear political motivation that underlines his responses.
The president has set priorities: for example, promoting the big oil companies. Accepting that climate change is real would require you to take some steps to address it. As he is reluctant to do so, the president considers that ignoring the problem and using his propaganda account on Twitter, which is a source of misinformation and falsehoods, is better for him.
Trump’s rejection of science is a power move
Refusing the advice of highly trained scientists and expert government bureaucrats also fits well with the president’s political image as an outsider and a scourge of elite political, academic and scientific establishments. It helps solidify his bond with supporters, who value that image and may share Trump’s reluctance to accept changes in traditional lifestyles, which could involve a national effort to combat global warming, for example.
As such, Trump’s rejection of science and fact is not just a personality trait, it is also a key factor in the method he uses to build, exercise, and hold onto power.
A similar sequence of events unfolded during the pandemic, a once-in-a-century disaster that, as Bob Woodward shows in his new book, Trump decided to downplay Americans for his own personal reasons in an election year.
Trump’s hostility toward wearing masks, which scientific experts say is critical to curbing the spread of the virus, was clearly based on hostility toward what many of his supporters see as a violation of individual rights.
Trump then ignored the science when he pressured states to reopen before the pathogen was suppressed, a development that helped unleash a wave of disease and death in the sunbelt. Now, Trump’s indoor campaign events, like a packed rally in Nevada on Sunday, are a huge act of defiance against the scientific community and insider council – another political move.
“The courage he has to hold that kind of meeting. I am speechless.” Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday.
A scientific ‘bible’ corrupted by politics
The news was another blow to scientists dealing with the pandemic.
“I find it abhorrent that political influences are trying and perhaps successfully inserting themselves into CDC communications, which have always been a very, very rigorous science-based model of righteousness,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a specialist. in internationally renowned infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, he told CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”
“They are the Bible that everyone in public health reads not only in this country but around the world. We cannot contaminate them with politics.”
With regard to the pandemic and many other issues for which the United States government was once relied upon to solve scientific and reasoned problems, it is too late for that.
