Biden Slams Trump As 'Climate Arsonist'

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday labeled President Trump as a “climate arsonist,” saying a potential second Trump term would see “hellish events” that will continue to become “more common, more devastating, and more deadly.”

“If we give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If we leave a climate denier with four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater. We need a president that respects science, understands that the damage from climate change is already here. Unless we take urgent action, it will soon be more catastrophic,” Biden said during a 25-minute prepared remarks delivered outside the Delaware Museum of Natural History.

“Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused the record fires, record floods, and record hurricanes. But if he gets a second term, these hellish events will become more common, more devastating, and more deadly,” Biden added.

Biden pointed to the wildfires and this summer’s damaging hurricanes to repeatedly hit Trump for being a “climate denial.”

“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned by wildfires?” Biden asked. “How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?”

Referring to one of Trump’s campaign main arguments regarding the safety of suburbs, Biden argued the real threat to the suburbs is not anarchy, but climate change.

“Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening our suburbs. That’s ridiculous,” Biden said. “But you know what’s actually threatening our suburbs? Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West. Floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest. And hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coasts.”

Biden’s remarks on Monday came as Trump traveled to California for a briefing with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, as well as federal and state officials battling the blazes. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, more than 3.3 million acres have been burned from the wildfires raving across the Golden State this year alone.

“As he flies to California today, we know he has no interest in meeting this moment. We know he won’t listen to the experts or treat this disaster with the urgency it demands, as any president should do during a national emergency.

“He’s already said he wanted to withhold aid to California, to punish the people of California, because they didn’t vote for him,” Biden added, referring to disgruntle former DHS official, Miles Taylor who alleges the president wanted to withhold emergency funding it was a blue state.

Biden sought to tie Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic to his “lack of a national strategy” in combatting climate change, by twisting the president’s signature line of attack to say we are “not safe in Donald Trump’s America.”

“Once again, he fails the most basic duty to this nation. He fails to protect us. And from the pandemic, the economic free-fall, the racial unrest, and the ravages of climate change, it’s clear that we are not safe in Donald Trump’s America,” Biden said.

“Because here’s the deal,” Biden continued. “Hurricanes don’t swerve to avoid red states or blue states. Wildfires don’t skip towns that voted a certain way. The impacts of climate change don’t pick and choose. That’s because it’s not a partisan phenomenon. It’s science, and our response should be the same.”

He used the speech to promote briefly his climate change plan that said would be a major job creator. The former Vice President has proposed to spend $2 Trillion as part of his economy initiative by investing in clean energy and infrastructure designed with the goal to tackle climate change.

“When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, he thinks hoax. When I think about climate change I think jobs,” Biden said. “Good-paying, union jobs that put Americans to work building a stronger, more climate-resilient nation. A nation with modernized water, transportation, and energy infrastructure to withstand the impacts of extreme weather and a changing climate.”

The former vice president vowed to return to the Paris Climate Accord, an Obama administration’s global climate pact that Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2017.

“While he turns us against our allies, I will bring us back into the Paris Agreement,” Biden said. “I will put us back in the business of leading the world on climate change. And I will challenge everyone to up the ante on their climate commitments.”