Donald Trump has come out swinging in a new Fox News interview, denying reported claims from within the Central Intelligence Agency that the Russians were deliberately aiding and abetting his candidacy and suggesting that “nobody really knows” if climate change is real.
Trump, whose partially-announced administration already looks like it – to put it lightly – won’t be doing much to address climate change, said that he’s “very open-minded” on the issue, but that it’s “not so hard and fast”. In the past, Trump has not been quite so open-minded and equivocal.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
Trump’s concern, as in the past, is that environmental regulations are stifling America’s competitiveness – which is no doubt why he’s appointed anti-Environmental Protection Agency warrior Scott Pruitt to the head of that very same agency. He too is a noted climate change denier.
Speaking in the interview, Trump continued along those lines:
If you look at what – I could name country after country. You look at what’s happening in Mexico, where … plants are being built, and they don’t wait 10 years to get an approval to build a plant, OK? They build it like the following day or the following week. We can’t let all of these permits that take forever to get stop our jobs.
Trump also denied the claims raised by so-called CIA insiders that the Russian government deliberately intervened in the U.S. election to get Trump elected.
“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it,” Mr Trump said. “We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”
Despite the fact that some Republicans – including John McCain and certifiably deranged ultra-right wing former Congressman Joe Walsh – believe Trump ought to make some moves towards endorsing an investigation of Russian involvement, Trump doesn’t think the hacking of the Democratic National Convention is quite as clear-cut:
Nobody really knows, and hacking is very interesting Once they hack, if you don’t catch them in the act you’re not going to catch them. They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean, [intelligence agencies] have no idea. Personally, it could be Russia. It … I don’t really think it is, but who knows? I don’t know either. They don’t know and I don’t know.
Compelling stuff, Donald. Hacking is indeed very interesting.
Source: Fox.
Photo: Fox.
