Politics

Trump Spars With ’60 Minutes’ On ‘Manmade’ Climate Change

Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Saagar Enjeti White House Correspondent
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President Donald Trump sparred with “60 minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl on the issue of climate change, during a wide ranging interview that aired Sunday.

Trump at one point during the 2016 presidential campaign declared that the notion of climate change is a hoax but walked that back saying, “I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s manmade.”

Stahl continued to press Trump on the issue saying, “I wish you could go to Greenland, watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels.” The president parried, “you don’t know whether or not that would have happened with or without man. You don’t know.”

Stahl brought up the “overwhelming” scientific consensus on manmade climate change to the president who brushed it off saying, “you’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda, Lesley … Look, scientists also have a political agenda.”

White House national economic council director Larry Kudlow similarly brushed off concerns about a new UN report warning of the dangers of climate change in a Sunday interview saying, “the issue here though is magnitudes and timing. Personally, I think the U.N. study is … way, way too difficult. I won’t say it’s a scare tactic but I think they overestimate.”