A remarkable thing occurred today. It was a Sunday morning, and instead of critiquing last night’s Saturday Night Live, Donald Trump decided to talk about all the things he’s going to change. He talked about lots and lots of things—including climate change.
It has been a bit confusing to decrypt the slow drip of tweets about his actual plans for destroying the environment when he takes office. For approximately three minutes and 43 seconds, Trump spoke to Chris Wallace about climate change and factors relating to climate change.
Mr. Trump recently tweeted, “If the press would cover me accurately & honorably, I would have far less reason to ‘tweet.’ Sadly, I don’t know if that will ever happen!” So, today, we’re going to make history! Below you’ll find every word he said in the section about climate change during his interview this morning with Chris Wallace on Fox News. If you’re looking for someone to edit this bullshit down and make it sound coherent, look elsewhere. This is the no spin zone. Read his words and weep.
[quotes inside grey boxes belong to Trump and are unedited, in chronological order.]
On taking “a wrecking ball to the Obama legacy”:
No, no I don’t want to do that at all, I just want what’s right. EPA you can’t get things approved. I mean people are waiting on line for 15 years before they get rejected. Okay?
Okay.
On making America more like Mexico:
That’s why people don’t want to invest in this country. I mean, you look at what’s going on. And you can look at a jobs report but take a look at the real jobs report. Which are the millions of people that gave up looking for work and their not considered in that number that’s less than 5 percent. Okay?
Okay.
I mean, we have jobs that are in the pipeline. And I deal with all the executives, the big ones and the small ones—I have really gotten to know this country. And when you have to wait 10 and 15 years for an approval and then you don’t even get the approval, it’s no good. So, we’re gonna clean it up; we’re gonna speed it up. And by the way, if somebody is not doing the right thing we’re not gonna approve.
On meetings with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio:
They were good meetings.
Good.
On appointing a man who hates the EPA to be the head of the EPA:
Speed up the process.
On appointing a man who is currently suing the EPA to be the head of the EPA:
Sure!
On first saying that climate change is a hoax and then saying he’s open-minded about it:
I am open-minded about it.
On what his open mind is thinking today:
I’m still open-minded. Nobody really knows. Look, I’m somebody that gets it, and nobody really knows. It’s not something that’s so hard and fast.
On making America more like Mexico—and China:
I do know this: Other countries are eating our lunch. If you look at what China’s doing. If you look at what... I can name country after country. Ya look at what’s happening in Mexico. Where our people just... our plants are being built. And they don’t wait ten years to get an approval to build a plant. Okay?
Okay.
They build it like the following day. You know the following week. We can’t let all of these permits that take forever to get stop our jobs.
On what he’s decided to call the people in America who have been forgotten:
I won because of the fact that people—our great, great American people have been forgotten. I call them the forgotten man and the forgotten woman. They’ve been forgotten. And you, in all fairness, and all of the folks in your world, in business, they forgot about these people. They’re not gonna forget about them in four years, they’re already trying to figure out what happened. But I understood it because I understand... our country.
On what he’ll do about the Dakota Access pipeline that was recently halted by the Army:
Okay, let me not answer the Dakota because perhaps that will be solved by the time I get there so I don’t have to create enemies on one side or the other. But I will tell you: when I get to office, if it’s not solved, I’ll have it solved very quickly.
On what that actually means:
I’m not saying anything.
On just saying something:
I just say something will happen. It’ll be quick. I think it’s very unfair. So, it’ll start. One way or the other. And we’ll have a decision...pretty quickly.
On making a decision about the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline:
And also the Keystone pipeline, we’ll have a decision fairly quickly. And you’ll see that.
On the reports that he will withdraw America from the Paris Climate Accords:
Now, Paris I’m studying. I do say this, I don’t want an agreement to put us at a competitive disadvantage with other countries. And as you know there are different times and different time limits on that agreement. I don’t want that to give China or other countries signing agreements an advantage over us.
In summary: things are going to happen and you bet your ass they are going to happen fast. Buckle up.
[Mediaite]