California Gov. Jerry Brown says Ted Cruz is 'absolutely unfit' to run for president

Gov. Jerry Brown
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) had some strong words for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Sunday, saying that his views on climate change make him "absolutely unfit to be running for office."


Brown made the comments before Cruz announced on Twitter late Sunday that he is running for president. On Late Night with Seth Meyers last week, Cruz said that he had just returned from New Hampshire, where there was "snow and ice," and believes that "debates on [climate change] should follow data, and many of the alarmists on global warming, they got a problem because the science doesn't back them up."

That was too much for Brown, who told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press: "That's absolutely false. Over 90 percent of the scientists who deal with climate are absolutely convinced that the human activity, industrial activity, the generation of CO2, methane, oxides and nitrogen, all the rest of the greenhouse gasses, are building up in the atmosphere." Not only is this causing a warm drought in California, Brown said, but also severe storms and cold on the East Coast. "It's climate disruption of many different kinds," he said. "That man betokens such a level of ignorance and a direct falsification of the existing scientific data. It's shocking."

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Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.