President Trump is an "environmentalist," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross claimed Friday on the Today show, the day after Trump announced that he is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. "He's very pro-environment," Ross said, explaining that those who say otherwise are "confusing the withdrawal" from the agreement aimed at limiting carbon emissions to help slow global warming "with the idea that he's against helping the climate." Ross emphasized that while Trump pulled out of the deal, he is not saying he's "not going to try to improve climate."
Today host Matt Lauer wasn't buying Ross' depiction of Trump as an "environmentalist." "How can you say he's an environmentalist when he's rolled back many of the initiatives of the Obama administration and now he's basically taken a 180-degree turn from what the Obama administration did in signing this Paris accord?"
Ross pushed back on the notion that the Obama administration was "right" to sign the agreement, which he argued is "destructive of U.S. economic growth." "But what about the 195 other countries around the world?" Lauer asked, pointing out that Obama was far from the only world leader who thought this was the right thing to do.
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