Day 134: From Paris to Pittsburgh (to The Weather Channel), the World Mocks Donald Trump

Stepping away from climate pact, Trump weakens U.S. standing worldwide.

As expected, Donald Trump announced yesterday that the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, joining Syria (who is the middle of a civil war) and Nicaragua (who didn’t believe the deal went far enough) as the only nations who declined to be in the pact of the 197 who are eligible to be in it.

Trump cited a lot of terrible, false reasons for pulling out. He claimed the U.S. faced “legal liabilities” by staying in the deal (not true); that the U.S. was suffering economically as a result of the accord (moments earlier he bragged about the strength of the U.S. economy); and he proclaimed that coal would be part of the future of the American energy industry (his chief economic advisor claimed just days ago that coal didn’t make much sense in today’s world).

Trump didn’t seem to understand most of what he was talking about in his own speech. Awkward pauses and self-interruptions are par for the course — and there were many— but he sounded out words in his speech like a first grader seeing a collection of letters in an order for the first time.

In a line that surely elicited high-fives from Trump’s speechwriters who thought they nailed it, Trump valiantly declared, “I was elected by voters of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Pittsburgh’s mayor Bill Peduto wasn’t having it.

Neither was newly elected French president Emmanuel Macron.

Nor were other world leaders.

Hell, even the Weather Channel trolled Trump:

Unprecedentedly, cities, states, colleges and businesses are vowing to uphold the provisions to the accord regardless of Trump’s speech. The New York Times reported that, despite the lack of current formal mechanisms for entities other than countries to be full parties to the deal, a growing group would try anyway:

The unnamed group — which, so far, includes 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses — is negotiating with the United Nations to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations.

Trump weakened the U.S.’s standing in the world yesterday. Instead of leading from the front, as he campaigned, he stood far behind 194 other nations in combating a global issue.

134 days in, 1328 to go

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