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Interview With Kentucky Senator Rand Paul; Trump to Withdrawal U.S. From Climate Accords. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired June 01, 2017 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:00:03]
SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: Absolutely incorrect.
When you look at climate change, the most dramatic ice ages, the dramatic warming and cooling of the planet all happened before man was even around for the most part.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: OK.
PAUL: And even when man was here, man was only burning fires. So we have had dramatic -- we've had carbon in the air 600 times what we have now. And so it's gone up and down. And I'm not saying we should forgive and discount pollution, but we should not be so alarmist that we're willing to give up all of the American jobs based on computer modeling that's been notoriously inaccurate over the last...
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: I just want to read this from the NASA Web site.
"The current warning trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely" -- and they define that as greater than 95 percent probability -- "to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and preceding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia."
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Those are the NASA scientists. They're wrong?
PAUL: Why did we change the name from global change to climate change?
Because there's some uncertainty now whether it's getting warmer or colder. And I can tell you, if you look at the details of the modeling and the projections in the last 15 years, they have altered almost every year, because their modeling doesn't add up.
All these people saying we're going to have 100-foot rise in our seas in the next 100 years, that kind of alarmism is not scientific. And actually, if you read many of the people who do want to control pollution, they will tell you that that's nonsense.
And so a 100-foot rise in the seas in 100 years, the seas are 300 feet higher now than they were when man came across the Bering Straits. But that took thousands and thousands of years.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: But, Senator, I'm just trying to get a straight answer on this question here about or not whether those NASA scientists I just quoted, whether they're are wrong.
PAUL: People who are saying that we're going to have mass extinction are wrong. People who say we're going to have a 100-foot rise in the oceans in the next 100 years are wrong.
And the climatologists who have predicted things over the last 15 years have been on large part their modeling has been inaccurate and has had to be reformulated because the numbers you put in don't add up to what they're saying is occurring.
TAPPER: I'm not talking about the most dire, extreme predictions, but even if there is a rise in the sea level of five feet or 10 feet, that can have a huge disruptive effect on...
(CROSSTALK)
PAUL: I think it's completely unknown whether it will be five inches or five feet.
And I think until you have evidence that shows that we really are in such alarmist straits...
TAPPER: So wait for it to happen?
PAUL: No. I think you have to have some evidence, though.
And you should base things on evidence. And for the American worker that makes $20,000, $25,000 a year working in the American energy sector, to tell them we're just going to -- him or her -- that you're not going to have a job and China doesn't have to obey the same rules, the whole reason this Paris accord should be done is not a debate over global warming or climate change or whatever you want to call it.
It should be a debate over whether it's fair. Is it fair for China to keep polluting at alarming rates and for America to be the one cutting back on carbon and China does do nothing? Is it fair that Russia gets to increase their carbon output by 50 percent?
That's not fair to America. It's not fair to the American workers. And I'm betting you that the viewership will say, you know what? America will say, we'd like to have jobs and we don't want these alarmists who are saying that we're going to have mass extinction, we don't want these people in charge.
They were in charge the past eight years and they tried to kill most of the jobs in my state. I think people want jobs and they want a clean environment. But they don't want alarmists in charge who take no account for American jobs.
TAPPER: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, thank you so much for your time, sir. Appreciate it.
PAUL: Thank you.
TAPPER: Let's turn to our panel.
And, Dana, you have some fresh reporting about what President Trump is thinking as he makes this decision. Obviously, we know that there are people on his team, including his daughter Ivanka, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who used to work for ExxonMobil which does not want the U.S. to pull out of this climate change agreement, lobbying for him to stay in it, others lobbying the other way.
What is going through the president's mind?
DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Can I just say before I answer that, I thought that interview was so fascinating and right on in the fact that you challenged him on some of the climate points.
But I think that he articulated some of the arguments that the president and his aides are going to make and want to try to make better than I have heard them make. So, that was a fascinating interview.
As far as the president goes, I am told that we obviously know that this has been debated internally for some time. But he has not been movable. And it's because he believes, I'm told by a source who has talked to him, he's 10000 percent sure he has to do this.
Why? Because he's convinced that America, that the deal is bad for America and the U.S. is a laughingstock for participating in agreements like this which he believes has no efficacy. And he's hoping that by triggering the withdrawal, which takes about four or five years, that he can then negotiate a better deal. I mean, how Trumpian is that, that he believes that he can negotiate a better deal?
[15:05:01]
TAPPER: But why is the U.S. a laughingstock?
Because the U.S. is -- the mind-set of the Obama administration was that the U.S. over history cumulatively is responsible for a majority -- not a majority, but a disproportionate percentage of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that have contributed to climate change.
BASH: Sure.
TAPPER: Therefore, the U.S. should have -- and also being the wealthiest country in the world, should have a disproportionate role.
That's why, in the president's view, the...
BASH: No.
TAPPER: OK. BASH: No, but that appears to be a separate issue.
I think from his perspective, the notion of the U.S. being a laughingstock is something that he's actually said it's been one main things he's been consistent of.
TAPPER: About every deal?
BASH: About every deal.
TAPPER: Right.
BASH: He's written books back when he was contributing to Democrats and talking about how wonderful the Clintons were.
He believed this, that the U.S. kept getting into bad deal after bad deal, not just trade agreements, but agreements like this. And when he talks about laughingstock, it's not about the substance of the issue, not about the fact that the U.S. does produce, you know, more of the problems than any other country, but it's about the way...
TAPPER: Historically?
BASH: Historically. Not now, right. But it's about the way that this deal was done.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: But he felt that way about NAFTA. And he's renegotiating NAFTA. He didn't withdraw from NAFTA. He did withdraw from the TPP.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Congress had done that already.
BORGER: Exactly.
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: But I think, with this, correct me if I'm wrong, he has to -- the way that the treaty works, he has to pull out before they can start, because it wasn't -- it wasn't...
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: And he had an option to pull out faster, by the way.
TAPPER: Pull out of the Paris agreement?
BORGER: He could have pulled out by pullout of the U.N. framework and that would have allowed him to withdraw faster.
Now he can only withdraw in 2020. So this may have been a more moderate option. I mean, I use that term advisably. But he could have withdraw sooner.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Jake, I was sitting here with my -- the few hairs I have left on my head.
BORGER: Where?
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: They came out.
JONES: I pulled them out listening to Senator Rand Paul.
This is what is happening. You have an American president who is now taking a meat axe to the only American industry that is growing. The clean energy sector in America is producing jobs at -- you can laugh if you won't, but you don't -- this is not the argument you want to have with me. This is my stuff.
So, the clean energy sector in this country is growing at 10 times the rest of the economy. You already have more solar workers than you have coal miners. You have more wind energy workers than you have coal miners. You have more Americans working in smart batteries than you have coal miners.
This is an American success story that the president has turned his back on. Worse than that, if you say this is a bad deal, what the brilliance of Donald Trump as a businessperson is hard for me to fathom.
But every other business leader in the country says it's a great deal. And I will tell you why. It's a great deal, because you just took 120 countries, and you made them into customers for American clean energy companies.
If you let those countries go and grow in a carbon-consumptive way, you feed the Middle East. If you let those countries grow and they have to rely on clean negotiate, it comes from the United States and Germany.
This is an incredible opportunity for American industries, and the president is against it.
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHEN MOORE, CNN SENIOR ECONOMICS ANALYST: Van, the reason I was laughing when you said is because, look, the fastest growing industry over the last 10 years is not clean energy. It's been we have a shale and oil and gas revolution...
JONES: Right.
MOORE: ... that was responsible for the recovery that we had. If we hadn't had shale and oil and gas, we wouldn't have had any recovery from the recession at all. It accounted or almost all the net increase.
We have put -- we have 10 million Americans that are employed directly or indirectly by the oil and gas industry.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: Let me just finish of my point. The intent of this deal over time is not just to destroy the coal industry, which Obama did pretty well, a good job on.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: No. Oh, my God.
MOORE: But also destroy the oil and gas industry.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Why is Shell for it? Why is Chevron for it?
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: Let me make one other point.
This idea that we have put more carbon in the atmosphere than anyone else, you know why? Because we're the richest country in the world.
TAPPER: Right.
MOORE: And you know what? How do you get rich? You use energy.
Energy is the master resource. We have more oil, more gas, 500 years worth of coal than any other country in the world. This is so anti- American to basically say we're going to shut down our energy, when China is not doing it and India is not doing it.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Why are American energy companies for it, then? I'm sorry.
MOORE: Why are they what?
JONES: Why are American energy companies for this deal?
BORGER: Rex Tillerson, too.
JONES: Rex Tillerson is for this deal.
BORGER: Former president of Exxon.
JONES: BP for this deal.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: It's a good question, Stephen.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Just to bring up the wider perspective, it's not just American fuel and petroleum industry companies that are in favor of this. A lot -- not all, but a lot of American companies, not manufacturing so much, but a lot of American companies are in favor of this deal.
Why?
MOORE: Yes.
I think partly they want to be seen as good corporate citizens. And they want to -- it's kind of a marketing campaign.
(LAUGHTER)
[15:10:05]
MOORE: But the point here is, it's a marketing campaign. Exxon is going to stop producing oil and gas, right?
JONES: No, they are not.
MOORE: I'm saying they are not going to.
But I want everybody on this panel to ask this question. How in the world is it going to help the global climate situation even if we shut down all of our energy when China and India are building dozens and dozens of coal plants right now?
Don't listen to what they say. Look at what they are doing. They are already completely out of compliance with this deal.
TAPPER: Let's bring in some other people on the panel.
CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: I'm not going to get into that.
But what I will say, Dana mentioned one of the reasons he did it, he think it's a bad deal. And it is true, 100 percent of Donald Trump's campaign was premised on the idea that, look, these people in office, these politicians, they make bad deals. I'm a businessman. I make good deals.
So, in a way, this is broadly consistent with what he campaigned on. The other point I would make is, I always come back to this, the Steve Bannon white board. Remember, we got a picture of that, that he writes down -- he had a bunch of stuff removed in his office so he could have a massive white board and write down all the campaign promises Donald Trump made, which were many?
It's a floor-to-ceiling white board.
TAPPER: Yes.
CILLIZZA: I think Donald Trump, and this was the Bannon argument.
Bannon is on the we need to get out of this accord. The Bannon argument is, you must make good on your campaign promises. You must do the things you told the people who voted for you.
(CROSSTALK) MOORE: What is wrong with that?
CILLIZZA: Nothing. No, I'm just -- I'm simply making the point.
That's what I think motivates this more than anything else is this belief that forget what we say, forget the press about fake news, forget all that stuff. At the end of the day, the way in which Donald Trump will be judged, both by voters in 2020 and by history more broadly, is he said he was going to do all of those things on the white board.
How many of them -- Steve Bannon says he puts big X's next to things he's done.
BASH: Well, he just broke a promise an hour ago.
CILLIZZA: And with Israel.
(CROSSTALK)
CILLIZZA: And he's done some of that.
But I will say, the story of the first 70 days of the Trump presidency was, wow, he's doing what he said he would do, the travel ban. Well, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it.
This is I think the Bannon influence, which is do what you said you would do.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: I want to -- do you think it's accurate to say that history will look at this decision by President Trump and judge in terms of that it was a campaign promise that he fulfilled, or do you that there will be, just to be counterintuitive to what you said, Chris, a more broader look at the effects on the environment and the effect international relations?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I think it will certainly be looked at in perhaps both contexts, in the context of the Trump's presidency, in the context of the Republican Party.
And if you think about what Republican presidents have done when they get into office after Democrats, they typically roll back regulations. Ronald Reagan famously ripped the solar panels off of the White House that Jimmy Carter had put in.
This is obviously different. It's monumental. It's this huge agreement between many, many countries, almost all the countries in -- across the globe.
But I do think it's in keeping with Trump's brand to do it in this way. He has told all of his followers that they were losers, that they had been taken advantage of by people in office, by globalists and by the elite. And so I think the fact that he is making such a big deal out of this now...
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: You know, look, Donald Trump was crystal clear in this campaign about what he was going to do. He was going to promote American energy. He was going to put coal miners back in their jobs.
Hillary went around the country and say I'm all in on global warming. My point here is, this election was, in a large part, a referendum on the global climate change agenda. And you know what? The voters rejected it.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: I don't want to get into the popular vote vs. electoral vote.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Because, obviously...
JONES: Fifty-one percent of Republicans actually want this deal.
TAPPER: Yes.
JONES: Keep that in mind, 51 percent of Republicans.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: The anti-climate change agenda, anti-climate change- combating-it agenda won the electoral vote. It did not win the popular vote.
And I think that's significant every time that's brought up.
But let's go to Fareed Zakaria right now, because I know that there's an international perspective on this that's important.
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN WORLD AFFAIRS ANALYST: Jake, I think that it really will -- if it proves to be what we think it is, this will be the day that the United States resigned as the leader of the free world.
It's nothing short of that. The irresponsibility of this act is breathtaking, because the Paris climate accords are actually extraordinarily flexible. They do not dilute American sovereignty.
They allow every country to make its own plans. That is why countries that have jealously guarded their sovereignty, like China, like India, like Russia, have all signed on.
There are 194 other countries that have signed on to this, including the countries that Donald Trump keeps saying always beat us in these agreements. They are all in.
(CROSSTALK) TAPPER: Let me interrupt for one second, Fareed, just because I want to ask, what of the point made by Senator Paul and Stephen Moore here on the panel that China is getting away with murder, and don't listen to what the Chinese and Indians are saying, look at what they're doing, they're building more polluting plants?
[15:15:15]
ZAKARIA: Look, under any agreement, there's going to be some cheating. People accused the United States of undermining the World Trading Organization rules all the time.
And there's a process that you put in place to adjudicate these. And when they're found, they can be fined. The argument that, generically, that's a reason to never engage in any kind of cooperation, look, if the Chinese were not signed on to the Paris accords, they would be polluting many, many times more.
There are also very good studies, one by the Grantham Institute, that points out that China is actually overshooting many of the targets it has arrived at.
I also want to point out, on this issue of the jobs of the future, where I thought Van did an excellent job, the only thing I would point out is, it's 194 countries that are potential markets, not just 125.
But the problem with the kind of statistics that Rand Paul and Steve Moore were providing is, we all have Google.
(LAUGHTER)
ZAKARIA: So, from the this January's Department of Energy report, United States' solar industry employs more workers than coal, oil and natural gas combined.
It grew 25 percent last year. The point Van was making is exactly right. These are the industries of the future. These are the industries that the United States can dominate.
As long as you are engaged in digging up oil, natural gas, that's open to lots of different countries around the world. It's not just the Middle East. It's Venezuela. It's Russia, the country that benefits perhaps most perhaps from all of this.
We would own the future if we could continue to dominate this. So it's bad geopolitically. It's bad economically. It and does not -- dilute American sovereignty.
This is a lose-lose-lose for the United States. And, as I say, for a young presidency, it's already the single most irresponsible act that this president has taken.
TAPPER: Let me go to Clarissa Ward now, who is covering a lot of the international response to this pending decision.
And, Clarissa, obviously, only Nicaragua and Syria are the countries that have not signed on to the Paris agreement as of now, so we're not expecting a chorus of approving songs for the decision President Trump is about to announce.
But what have you been hearing so far in terms of feedback?
CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, I think there's sort of two stages of grief.
The first stage is this kind of burning realization that, like, oh, my goodness, this is really happening. The U.S. is slowly but surely sort of deferring its global leadership and its role as the leader of the free world.
And it's challenging the alliances that have traditionally held the West together for many decades. So we see leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a recent campaign rally saying, you know what, there's a realization that we have to realize we can no longer necessarily depend on the U.S. And I think that's something that is hitting particularly Europe very hard indeed.
Then you have the kind of second stage of grief, if you like, which is that, well, we don't need you anyway and maybe we're better off without you anyway, because there are concerns that even if the U.S. had stayed a part of the accord, that they were already working, the White House, to sort of undermine some of the progress and initiatives that have been put together by the Obama administration, and, of course, because the Paris accord is not legally binding, that the end result would be that the U.S. or the White House or President Trump would slowly seek to dilute any sort of meaningful reform or impact that the U.S. would have.
And then the third and final one, I would say, is kind of schadenfreude, whereby we see Europe kind of giggling, OK, U.S., if you want to hand over, cue China, and we heard the E.U.'s Juncker today saying, we're very excited to work with China now.
There's a big E.U.-China climate accord being signed tomorrow. And there's a sense that China stands to make billions and billions of dollars off of kind of leading the charge in terms of green energy, in terms of all of the moneymaking that can be done through green initiatives.
So I think we're seeing sort of three different stages of grief, ending with sort of anger and bitterness and a bit of schadenfreude. But at the end of the day, Jake, the sentiment that is underpinning it, really, is a huge amount of sadness and disappointment that the U.S. does appear to be saying America first, and that's it, guys.
TAPPER: Clarissa Ward in London.
Van, as somebody who works on green jobs, let me ask you a question.
Why does this have to mean that the U.S. is ceding anything in terms of manufacturing green products or green jobs here and exporting them abroad? We have a private energy sector that is able to do whatever it wants to do. [15:20:02]
JONES: Well, there's a couple things.
First of all, it -- rules matter. Market signals matter. I don't think people have understood -- we have talked about this so much about science and climate and polar bears and trees and all that sort of stuff.
And, in fact, we are in the middle of an extinction event. But let's not talk about that. Let's just talk about how America gets to be great again. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about putting America first. Let's talk about that.
This is the way that you do it. You get the rest of the world bought into a carbon-constrained growth strategy, which means you pull the rug out from under the Middle East. And then they say, well, where are we going to get all this clean energy technology?
Have you ever heard of Tesla. Have you ever heard of California?
(LAUGHTER)
JONES: I mean, listen, you are literally throwing away customers for American industry.
And here's the other thing. You could put the entire Rust Belt back to work -- I'm about to cry -- just building the wind turbines to put on barges and send around the world. But we don't want to do that, because we've now gotten to this thing where it's tribal.
We're no longer looking at actual facts and economics. It's a tribal signal that I'm a good conservative if I pooh-pooh this stuff. And you got workers sitting there who are Trump voters who could go to work tomorrow if we did this thing. It's terrible.
TAPPER: Well, let me ask you, do you think that the Democratic Party has failed...
JONES: Yes.
TAPPER: ... in explaining...
JONES: Yes.
TAPPER: I didn't even finish my sentence.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: I could talk about the "Wonder Woman" movie.
(LAUGHTER)
TAPPER: In explaining to what President Trump on the campaign trail would call the forgotten man and the forgotten women, the people in plane , Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan? JONES: The biggest tragedy right now is that you have got this working-class base of Trump people who are looking for hope. They're looking for opportunity. How am I going to get a job?
And the jobs could come from the wind turbines you build, the solar -- why do you laugh?
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: It's the manufacturers, the truckers, the coal miners that are the victims of the climate change agenda.
JONES: No, no, no.
MOORE: They are the first people who get laid off. It's not university professors.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Let me help you. Let me help you. You're just wrong on this. I'm going to help you.
Here's the deal. Guess what? There are -- it's going to be very important for coal miners to go to work in Appalachia in particular if you do this agenda. And I'm going to tell you why.
If you are going to build wind turbines, you have got to have enough thermal capacity from your coal to do it. In other words, you could actually, for a long period of time, have coal miners fueling the building of the wind turbines.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: Why can't we mine coal? We have 500 years worth of coal. Why would we -- we have clean coal. We have the cleanest coal in the world. The technology is incredible.
And, by the way, you all keep talking about clean energy. We have a clean energy. It's called natural gas.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: It's the reason the United States has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country. So, are you including natural gas?
JONES: Let's talk about that. Here's what I love.
You guys can't have it both ways, sir. Do you like fracking and natural gas, or do you like coal? Because the reason...
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: We should do both.
(CROSSTALK) JONES: This is the sort of nonsense that they got away with the whole campaign.
You cannot be for fracking, which has dropped the price of natural gas below coal, and put a bunch of coal miners out of work, say you want more fracking and more coal. That's like saying you want more water and more fire.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: Wait a minute. You're right that the low natural gas prices really hurt the coal industry.
You know what else it's killing? It's killing the wind industry. Wind is five times more expensive than natural gas, literally five times more expensive per kilowatt hour. Why would use a highly inefficient form of energy?
And, by the way, we have another one, nuclear power. I don't see any of your friends on the left talking about nuclear power. And nuclear power emits no carbon emissions.
TAPPER: But can I just say, I still don't have an answer to the question of why withdrawing from this treaty means that the United States' private sector will lose out on a whole bunch of jobs.
JONES: I will tell you this.
You will have four things that happen. States, cities, tribes and some industries will try to push forward anyway. What matters, though, is if you have a clear market signal that if you're going to build out your energy sector around the world, or if you're going to build out your energy sector in the United States, that you're going to have to do it in a carbon-constrained way.
That gives you a more solid target in the market.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: What other industry has that? What other industry in the world has that kind of market signal?
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Hold on a second. You just said -- and the only thing I agree with you so far all day, sir, is that energy is special.
MOORE: OK.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Energy is the most important contributor to any economy.
MOORE: Yes.
JONES: And so how you do energy is a matter not just of markets, but also of policy. And the policy signals matter.
What you're going to do now is, you're creating, Jake, uncertainty in the clean energy market. That freezes up innovation. That freezes up capital. And it costs you jobs, period.
TAPPER: But if 194 countries are still part of this, and China is going to take advantage of it, why can the United States not still take advantage of it?
JONES: That's the great danger. He is rolling the dice.
I don't know if he knows that he's doing this. He's rolling the dice. If the dominoes start to fall, in other words, if...
[15:25:02]
TAPPER: Other countries pull out?
(CROSSTALK)
HENDERSON: But you also need government investment, right, in these sort of new technologies to get them off the ground.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: Yes, you do.
MOORE: But the government didn't do the shale, the fracking.
JONES: Yes, they did.
MOORE: No, they didn't.
(CROSSTALK)
JONES: That is not true.
MOORE: It was not done by government.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: I want to bring Fareed. Fareed is at a disadvantage because he's not here to jump in. But I know he's raising his hand.
Fareed, jump in.
ZAKARIA: Sure.
What I wanted to say, Jake, is that, let's be honest, what we are saying is that clean energy does require government subsidies right now. In that, it is not different from any infant industry of importance.
Give you an example. The United States now dominates the computer industry, the Internet, the whole information age. Do you know why? Because, in the 1950s, the government of the United States bought more than half of all computer chips produced.
They were bought at exorbitant costs, made no sense commercially to produce them. And the United States, the Defense Department, basically, and then NASA just bought these things at -- then they started to buy the mainframe computers, up to the point where the costs go down.
That is what is happening in clean technology. That's what Germany does. That's what China does, because they see that the future is going to be a land of clean energy. And they want to dominate it.
So, just as the United States did with many technologies in the past, which produced the Internet, which produced GPS and produced every leading technology company of today, the United States has to provide some market signals.
And if you take away the Paris accords, you take away that surety. That's the danger here. Somebody is going to dominate these clean energy sectors. They will get some nascent government support. I would rather it be here than China.
MOORE: Fareed, I love you, but I have got to say it's comical to say that the wind industry is an infant industry. We have had windmills for 1,000 years. Come on. This is no infant industry.
(CROSSTALK)
ZAKARIA: That's your argument, Steve? That's your argument?
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: There's a reason people stopped using windmills 250 years ago and used fossil fuels, because fossil fuels are...
(CROSSTALK)
ZAKARIA: And, Steve, there was an abacus in China 2,000 years ago.
The wind industry today is slightly different than the wind industry you're talking in about Holland 1,000 years ago. If you can't see that, I don't know where to begin.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Gloria?
BORGER: Well, I'm going to defer to Van, because he's really eager here, and then I will go.
TAPPER: OK. Go ahead, Van.
JONES: OK, so here's the thing.
A couple things. First of all, the fracking revolution, which is an extraordinary revolution, all of that R&D was done on the government dime. That is true. Also, when you're talking about the windmills vs. wind turbines, wind
turbines are Boeing-level engineering. It's like a jet engine in the sky.
BASH: It's not what you see in Amsterdam.
JONES: It's not what you see in Amsterdam.
And so, again, when you have all this mythology out there, and so -- and what is so great about that? Who can make that stuff? American workers can make that stuff.
And so what I'm desperate about is, I think that the Democrats and the environmentalists have done a horrible job of making the economic case on this stuff. And, as a result, then it's going to cost six million jobs. That's complete hocus.
That study has been disapprove a million times. But they believe it because they never hear us talking about the work and the wealth and the health benefits of a green energy economy, that the jobs of the future were thrown away today. It is not just a tweet. It's an action from the president.
TAPPER: Gloria.
BORGER: So, can I just take a step back for a moment? I know you guys don't want to do that.
But I think the treaty itself sent a signal worldwide that it's time to clean up. We have all got to do this. It's time to clean up.
And I think by the United States withdrawing -- and, again, I would point out, this is not until 2020. It's actually a day after the next presidential election that this would take effect.
CILLIZZA: What a coincidence.
BORGER: This is not a small point.
But that this is a signal. Us withdrawing and becoming along with Nicaragua, which didn't think this treaty went far enough, and Syria, which is in the middle of a civil war, with the United States now saying, OK, we're with them, I think it is not a good signal to the rest of the world.
And I would also say, politically, to my political colleagues here...
TAPPER: This is Vice President Pence. I'm going to break away.
BORGER: OK.
TAPPER: Just so we cover -- Vice President Pence is out there talking at the Rose Garden. Let's listen in.
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Members of Congress, distinguished guests, on behalf of the first family, welcome to the White House.
(APPLAUSE)
PENCE: You know, it's the greatest privilege of my life to serve as vice president to a president who is fighting every day to make America great again.
Since the first day of this administration, President Donald Trump has been working tirelessly to keep the promises that he made to the American people.
President Trump has been reforming health care, enforcing our laws, ending illegal immigration, rebuilding our military. And this president has been rolling back excessive regulations and unfair trade practices --
