Trump Demands Canada Pay for Wildfire Smoke as U.S. Fires Burn Too

[00:00:00]The President of the United States has identified a new threat to national security, the air, and specifically Canadian air, which according to him is supposed to stay in Canada.

[00:00:15]Like, you can't make this stuff up if you tried, all right?

[00:00:19]President Donald Trump stood on the tarmac and told reporters that he had called the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, to deliver a message.

[00:00:28]And that message was that Canada needs to stop its wildfire smoke from coming in and poisoning our air.

[00:00:38]>> I have a good relationship with Mark Carney, but you know, we got to stop the fires up there. If we can help them, we'll help them.

[00:00:45]But, maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or should do some tariffs.

[00:00:51]>> Yeah, let's talk about the man who believes that smoke needs to have a passport. Now, let's set aside, just just for a minute, the fact that a sitting president is demanding that a neighboring country cut him a check because weather crossed a line on a map.

[00:01:07]Donald Trump believes that smoke, airborne particulates pushed around by wind, can be held on one side of an international border.

[00:01:17]That Canada could, if it simply cared enough, keep its smoke at home.

[00:01:23]Like, he thinks the sky has customs.

[00:01:27]Now, here's the actual situation that he's describing. There are wildfires.

[00:01:32]Canada has had brutal fire seasons. The US has had its own. And smoke from those fires travels, sometimes hundreds of miles, because that's what smoke does.

[00:01:43]It doesn't stop for a border.

[00:01:45]It has never stopped for a border. There is no border patrol in the troposphere.

[00:01:52]This is roughly the science level of a third-grade weather unit.

[00:01:57]And the President's response to it is to demand a refund.

[00:02:01]Now, let's get to the part that turns this from stupid to actual policy.

[00:02:05]Because within that same stretch, Donald Trump actually ordered a formal federal review of the National Academy of Sciences.

[00:02:13]His complaint?

[00:02:15]That the academy's climate guidance, the material prepared to help federal judges understand the science, is {quote} {unquote} fraudulent, biased, and misleading.

[00:02:27]He claims that it swayed court decisions and cost the country billions of dollars.

[00:02:33]And this isn't coming out of nowhere.

[00:02:34]Earlier this year, the Federal Judicial Center already pulled the climate science chapter out of its reference manual on scientific evidence after there were accusations that it was biased. Mhm, so the chapter is already gone.

[00:02:48]This new order is him going back for the people who wrote it.

[00:02:53]The man who stands out on the tarmac and reveals that he does not understand that smoke moves through the air is now ordering federal investigators to go after actual scientists for the crime of explaining how the climate works.

[00:03:08]That that's not just ignorance, man.

[00:03:10]Ignorance is passive. This is dangerous stupidity.

[00:03:16]It is malicious stupidity.

[00:03:19]Bro is kicking down the door of an institution that decided to tell him, based on reality science, that he's wrong.

[00:03:26]And look, uh this but fits a pattern, okay? Because he does this every single time the sky embarrasses him. Oh, there's a hurricane? I better get my Sharpie.

[00:03:40]Look, when California was burning, his big theory was that they hadn't raked the forest floors, okay? And and he blamed the governor. He he blamed the liberals. He blamed Joe Biden.

[00:03:51]Anything but putting the blame on the warming climate.

[00:03:56]Look, the smoke is real. The poison air is real. I'm living in an area that has been affected.

[00:04:02]This is a genuine public health problem, and it is getting worse because the fires are getting worse. And the fires are getting worse because the planet is warming.

[00:04:12]That's the chain. Warming, fire, smoke, people getting sick.

[00:04:16]And at every single link in that chain, this administration's answer is to deny that the link is even there.

[00:04:22]Look, you can't bill Canada for a warming atmosphere.

[00:04:27]You can't investigate the National Academy of Sciences into making the smoke stop.

[00:04:31]None of it does a single goddamn thing for the guy in Michigan with asthma who's checking the air quality index before he decides whether his kids can play outside.

[00:04:39]The performance of doing something has completely replaced actually doing something.

[00:04:45]Now, here's the irony about this. Not long after Trump demanded Canada stop poisoning American air, Canada issued its own air quality warnings.

[00:04:54]Over what?

[00:04:55]Smoke.

[00:04:56]Smoke that is drifting north from fires in the United States.

[00:05:03]Oops.

[00:05:04]The same border-blind smoke he wanted to bill Canada for started blowing the other way into Canada off of our fires.

[00:05:12]Physics, turns out, doesn't take sides.

[00:05:16]And it definitely doesn't take the president's phone calls.

[00:05:20]So, his theory that smoke can be stopped at the border if you just yell at the right prime minister just got tested and within days by the atmosphere itself, and the verdict came back with a very clear no.

[00:05:36]Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States has declared war on the weather.

[00:05:41]And the weather remains undefeated.

[00:05:45]Now, if you appreciated this breakdown, please like this video.

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[00:05:53]Thank you all for watching.