The Trump administration is putting a lot of points on the board in Washington, although thanks to the MSM’s near-total obsession with the lunatic “Russians and Trump hacked the election” meme you hardly ever hear about them. But considerable progress has been made in rolling back the regulatory state, trimming back the intolerable bureaucracy and restraining the growth of the federal budget. I’ll be even happier when I see the wrecking ball outside more than a few federal agencies the next time I’m in Washington, but in general they’re off to a good start.
One thing president Trump could do — and, likely, will do very soon — is put a stake through the heart of the “climate-change” “consensus.” Not simply because it’s idiotic, economically damaging, and the perfect expression of western self-loathing, but also because it’s another Obama monument that deserves to be ash-heaped as quickly as possible.
Since everything Trump does, says, thinks or burps is now subject to immediate MSM scrutiny, spin, and instant repackaging as disinformation, this story at first appears worrisome:
President Trump is still thinking through the arguments as he decides whether the United States should withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, senior administration officials said Friday. “I think his views are evolving,” White House national economic council director Gary Cohn told reporters in Sicily. “And he came here to learn and he came here to get smarter.”
“The president is thinking about what his options are and is taking in what he learned from world leaders today,” Cohn said. “If he were standing here, he would tell you he feels much more knowledgable on the topic today, even though I think he’s very very knowledgable in talking with leaders and having an exchange with many leaders today that have been talking about this topic for years.”
Trump, who has been on a foreign swing as president, is in Sicily on Friday and Saturday for the G7 summit. The White House has said Trump won’t announce his decision on the Paris Agreement until after the summit.
Well, if small children like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Justin Trudeau have anything to teach Trump, it would be a miracle. But don’t panic just yet:
“The one thing I’ll say that won’t change though is he’s certain to base his decision based on what he thinks is best for the American people,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster said. “So while his views are evolving, the basis for his decision remains unchanged.”
Clearly, for Trump now to violate a major campaign promise and stick with the Paris agreement would be a huge mistake. It would both enrage and dishearten his base, which has stood by him throughout the attempted rolling coup engineered by the Deep State and the intelligence community, and facilitated by the press. He must slam-dunk it, no matter what the pygmy states of Europe and the semi-imaginary country of Canada think:
“The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the leaders wrote. “Understanding this process, the Heads of State and of Government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom and the Presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement, as previously stated at the Ise-Shima Summit.”
Cohn said Friday that the U.S. president had told his fellow G7 leaders that “the environment is very, very important to me, Donald Trump”—but reiterated his concerns that the U.S. was falling behind India and China in manufacturing. “He didn’t want to do anything to put the U.S. at a disadvantage,” Cohn said.
Trump understands that without two of the biggest polluters on the planet, India and China, the Paris agreement is worthless. Let’s hope he acts on that belief. As Margaret Thatcher said to George H.W. Bush: this is no time to go wobbly.
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