By Garrett Downs
President Donald Trump lampooned Democratic efforts to fight climate change early and often during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday while vowing to rapidly ramp up fossil fuel and mineral production in the United States.
Trump delivered a speech celebrating the first few weeks of his second term, including declaring an energy emergency. Democrats — those who didn’t boycott the address — responded with derision to how the president has run the country since Jan. 20.
“I terminated the ridiculous Green New Scam, I withdrew from the unfair Paris climate accord, which was costing us trillions of dollars,” Trump said. “We ended all of Biden’s environmental restrictions that were making our country far less safe and totally unaffordable.”
Even though Congress never enacted the Green New Deal, the president and Republicans use it as shorthand for Democratic actions against climate change. The GOP is in the process of rolling back broad swaths of former President Joe Biden’s environmental legacy.
Trump slammed the Biden administration for moving to limit oil and gas leasing, even though production remained high. He also appeared to blame the former president for the closure of coal-fired power plants.
“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on Earth by far, and now I fully authorized the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called: Drill, baby, drill,” Trump said.
Beyond well-worn rhetoric, the president said he would announce “historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths here in the USA.” He did not provide details.
Trump, when talking about Ukraine, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had written him a letter keeping a minerals deal between the two countries alive.
The president took credit for ending what he called the Biden administration’s “insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our autoworkers and companies from economic destruction.”
The former president didn’t enact an EV mandate as Republicans claim, but he did push rules that would promote the transportation sector’s electrification.
Trump touted a “gigantic” natural gas pipeline project in Alaska. The president was referring to a pending cross-state pipeline and liquefied natural gas export project that has been in the works for years, and he’s been pushing Asian countries to invest.
“Japan, South Korea and other nations want to be our partner with investments of trillions of dollars each,” Trump said.
Trump spoke about retaking the Panama Canal. And even though he said Greenland had the right of self determination, he reiterated his intention to take it over.
“I think we’re going to get it one way or the other,” said the president. “We’re going to get it.”
