WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer claims to be in the dark about what his boss believes about climate change, even though Donald Trump has dismissed it as a Chinese-perpetrated hoax and, in a 2014 tweet, “bullshit.”
Asked at Tuesday’s press briefing if the president thinks human activity is contributing to global climate change, Spicer said, “Honestly, I haven’t asked him that. I can get back to you.”
A longtime climate skeptic, Trump in a Saturday post to Twitter said he would announce this week whether the U.S. will withdraw from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump vowed to “cancel” the pact.
In signing the accord, nearly 200 countries committed to slashing carbon emissions in an effort to prevent global temperatures from spiraling to the 2 degrees Celsius mark.
Earlier this month, White House sources told HuffPost that Trump was leaning toward an exit from the accord. And the president recently told “confidants,” including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he intends to walk away from the agreement, Axios reported on Saturday.
Spicer said Trump met Tuesday with Pruitt — who has called the Paris pact a “bad business deal” for the U.S. — to discuss the matter, and an announcement will be made “shortly.”
“Ultimately, [Trump] wants a fair deal for the American people,” Spicer said.
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