When first son-in-law Jared Kushner sat down with Bob Woodward to discuss his father-in-law’s administration, he told the veteran journalist, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots.” The quote was obviously ironic given Kushner’s history as an overconfident idiot, but it could just as easily have described Donald Trump, who has long thought of himself as the smartest person in the room when, in reality, he’s a colossal moron. Despite bankrupting six businesses, he thinks he knows more about monetary policy than the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Despite proclaiming that windmills cause cancer, he thinks he knows “more about renewable [energy] than any human being on Earth.” The list of things Trump claims he knows better about than anyone else goes on and on, but perhaps none is more dangerous than his belief that he knows more about climate science than actual scientists, an astonishing display of ignorance that was out in full force on Monday.
In California for an event focused on the fires that have ravaged the West Coast, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and killed at least 28, Trump was told by Wade Crowfoot, head of the state’s Natural Resources Agency, “We’ve had temperatures explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley—130 degrees [Fahrenheit]. But even in greater L.A., 120-plus degrees. And we’re seeing this warming trend make our summers warmer, but also our winters warmer, as well.” Referencing Trump’s claim that if California would merely rake its forests the fires wouldn’t happen, Crowfoot charitably acknowledged that “One area of mutual agreement and priority is vegetation management, but I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forest, and actually work together with that science, that science is going to be key.”
To which Trump responded: “It’ll start getting cooler. You just—you just watch.”
“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot said.
“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump shot back, with the confidence of a guy who thinks bleach is safe to inject in one’s veins.
As the Post‘s Philip Baum points out, science actually does know: