Don Lemon blasts Trump for refusing to “accept the facts” on climate change

On Tuesday, CNN host Don Lemon tore into President Donald Trump for an “assault on the truth” due to the White House’s release of its climate change report, The Hill reports.

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“It’s strategy of just refusing to accept the facts when they don’t fit with the president’s world view. Of refusing to accept what the members of his own administration tell him,” Lemon said.

Last Friday, the White House quietly released an alarming climate change report detailing the severe effect of unchecked greenhouse emissions on American livelihoods, agriculture and economy.

“This president and his White House, they think that they can just dismiss the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that climate change is caused by human activity,” he said. “And their assault on the facts continues.”

Donald Trump has regularly expressed doubt about climate change — repeatedly claiming that it’s a “hoax” — but the 1,700-page report, produced by scientists from 13 federal agencies, contradicts all of his environmental policies and nearly every theory and proclamation he has made about climate science.

The report, which is required by law to come out every four years, confirms that climate change is directly connected to ongoing environmental issues such as low water levels, turbulent storms and deadly wildfires.

In an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday, Trump discredited climate change by basically calling it fake and that he doesn’t believe in man-made climate change.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump said. “You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean.”

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“As to whether or not it’s manmade and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is,” the president added.

Trump is disavowing a report by his own administration that was released on Friday with data proving that climate change has dire consequences that requires an improved response.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders however argued that the report was not fact-based.

“We think that this is the most extreme version and it’s not based on facts,” she said. “It’s not data driven. We’d like to see something that is more data driven. It’s based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you’re talking about the climate.”