Donald Trump is a convicted felon. He falsified business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star that could have otherwise cost him the election in 2016. And then when he did lose the election in 2020, he filed 62 lawsuits in court, claiming that the election results were fraudulent. He lost every single one of those cases, but nevertheless proceeded to incite a mob who invaded the Capitol to try to prevent certification of the election results. He continues to this day to insist that the election was “rigged,” with zero evidence to support his claim.
Donald Trump is a liar, a cheat, a fraudster, and a rapist. He is mean-spirited and disrespectful towards anyone who disagrees with him. He is a flaming narcissist and sociopath, who cares only about himself and his television ratings. He has an obsession with crowd sizes. He makes grandiose claims for himself that have no basis in fact. And that’s pretty much all you need to know about Donald Trump.
However, when it comes to the twin existential threats of climate and nuclear weapons, it gets worse.
Climate
Donald Trump is a climate denier. He wants to “drill, drill, drill” and reverse even the most meager steps forward on climate. We can’t know for sure what Donald Trump would or would not do if he gets back into the White House. But we do know what he did during the four years that he last occupied that position:
Trump gave us four years of backwards movement on climate.
According to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, The Trump administration took 162 steps backwards in terms of undoing existing efforts to address climate change.
- One of his very first acts as President, on January 20th, 2017, was to “freeze” all new energy efficiency and renewable fuel standards that were to go into effect as a result of previous legislation under President Obama.
- Only four days after taking office, President Trump instructed the Secretary of the Army to “take all actions necessary and appropriate” to expedite the approval of the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.
- Trump’s first budget proposed elimination of funding for a number of climate change-related programs, including the Clean Power Plan, the UNFCCC and international climate funds, the Energy Star program, clean energy research, and NASA earth science research.
- On March 28, 2017, President Trump issued an executive order allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind the Clean Power Plan (CO2 emission standards for existing power plants), CO2 emission standards for new power plants, and methane emission standards for the oil and gas sector. He also revoked a moratorium on federal coal leasing.
- On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
- On August 21, 2017, President Trump disbanded the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment (NCA).
- In April, 2018, the EPA announced it would not enforce 2015 regulations aimed at cutting dangerous HFC emissions.
- In May, 2018, President Trump revoked the Federal Sustainability Plan, aimed at improving the sustainability of all federal agencies.
- In August, 2018, the EPA began rolling back federal clean car and fuel economy standards.
- In March, 2019, the Bureau of Land Management opened up 9 million acres of protected federal lands to oil and gas extraction.
- In September, 2019, BLM repealed regulations governing methane waste emissions.
- In August, 2020, BLM opened 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling.
Nuclear Weapons
Donald Trump is a jingoistic nationalist. All he wants is for the United States to be “first” and on top and in control of everything that goes on globally, and that includes having the biggest and “best” nuclear weapons on the planet. He has, and will no doubt continue to, undermine even the most meager arms control measures. We can’t know for sure what Donald Trump would or would not do if he gets back into the White House. But we do know what he did during the four years that he last occupied that position:
Trump gave us four years of nuclear warmongering and backwards movement on disarmament
The Trump administration took a number of steps backwards in terms of undoing existing efforts to address the nuclear nightmare.
- One of Donald Trump’s first acts as President was to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was negotiated together with the European Union, Russia and China to ensure that Iran would not develop its own nuclear weapons capability.
- In response to ongoing nuclear weapons testing by North Korea, President Trump threatened that country with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” the most direct threat to use nuclear weapons by a President of the United States since President Kennedy threatened Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
- President Trump then announced his intention to pull the US out of the INF Treaty, a cornerstone of Cold War era arms control that removed over 10,000 nuclear warheads from the European continent.
- In his first budget, President Trump insisted on substantial increases for developing new nuclear weapons, including a new, more “usable” low-yield submarine-launched nuclear weapon, the W-76-1, which went into production in 2018 and was deployed on US Trident submarines in 2019.
- In January 2020, as a result of these and many other backwards steps being taken by the Trump administration, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to doomsday since 1945.
- In May, 2020, President Trump announced that the US would pull out of the Open Skies Treaty that allows countries to fly unarmed surveillance flights over each other in order to verify compliance with other treaties and reduce tensions.
- In September, 2020, the Trump administration asked the military to assess how quickly it could pull nuclear weapons out of storage and load them onto bombers and submarines if an arms control treaty with Russia is allowed to expire in February.