Senator Whitehouse slams Trump over COP30 conference support denial
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The White House called Senator Sheldon Whitehouse a victim of fraud after he publicly complained that the Trump administration would not fund or support the COP30 climate change conference in Belém, Brazil, this week.
The Trump administration has largely ignored the nonsense of global climate change leaders; It’s a stark contrast to former President Joe Biden’s dispatch of Clinton confidant John Podesta to lead a key U.S. delegation to COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2024.
White House press secretary Taylor Rogers said Whitehouse, D.R.I. “Unfortunately, Senator Whitehouse has fallen victim to the biggest scam of the century: The Green New Scam,” he said.
“The Senator may foolishly waste time and money attending this radical ‘climate’ conference, but the Trump administration refuses to waste taxpayer money.”
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Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse speaks at the hearing. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Whitehouse spoke at a news conference on the House side of the Capitol on Thursday, with the approval of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
Whitehouse held up his COP30 badge and complained that it labeled him as “GLOBE: the Global Organization of Legislators for a Balanced Environment” and not as a representative of the “United States of America.”
This group was founded by then-Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn. and the late Sen. John Heinz III, R-Pa. In the 1990s, Whitehouse said, Secretary Marco Rubio relied on the “energy and environment coalition” in the House to facilitate his travel, without support from the State Department.
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Whitehouse said the conversation, in which California Gov. Gavin Newsom was also traveling, was indicative of “the United States’ inability to be there.”
“For the first time in history, to my knowledge, the State Department has refused to support or facilitate my travel or certification. My credentials do not say United States,” he said, adding that supporting “CODELs,” or congressional delegations, is generally State Department or executive branch protocol.
“[T]The State Department refused to support it; “This is how bad the Trump administration has become.”
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Whitehouse said President Donald Trump ignored COP30 because he did not effectively represent the US government on climate issues.
“He represents the fossil fuel industry and, in particular, its big billionaire fossil fuel donors,” Whitehouse said, before moving on to his assertion that “carbon pricing,” which critics at the conference called “carbon taxes,” is crucial.
“The good things that came out of the COP[30] So far it means the plane has crashed higher into the mountain. “But if you want to get the plane safely to the top of the mountain, you have to have carbon pricing.”
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The Ocean State Democrat said he warned European COP30 participants to act decisively if Trump attacks his climate pledges.
Jeffries later echoed Whitehouse, saying Trump was unwilling to address “issues that are important to the American people,” such as climate change and affordability.
“The Trump administration and the United States government have chosen not to engage and not engage in the most recent conference, leaving America and the Americans behind, essentially leaving the leadership on this issue in the world to our rival, the Chinese Communist Party,” Jeffries said. he said.
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Meanwhile, Daniel Turner, founder of Power The Future, a Virginia group focused on energy policy advocacy on the industry’s impacts on workers and rural communities, said Whitehouse was out of line in bringing it up to such an issue.
“It was bad enough that Senator Whitehouse went on a tropical vacation and praised the communist Chinese while the nation was reeling from the Democratic government shutdown,” Turner said.
Turner appeared to be referencing a Fox Business segment in which Whitehouse filmed himself lamenting his lonely official presence at COP30 and saying how big the Chinese official “pavilion” was.
“I will never kiss the boots of the Communist Chinese, who use slave and child labor to produce lousy wind and solar power that drives up the price of American electricity,” Turner said, saying it shows how clueless “the blue-blooded, Whites Only Country Club Whitehouse” is.
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In 2021, Whitehouse refused to apologize for his family’s membership in a club in Newport, RI and was accused of: but rejected, kept a discriminatory membership policy
“I think the people who run this place are still working on it, and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet,” Whitehouse said at the time.
Whitehouse also defended his presence at COP30 in a statement this month, saying Republican “corruption” was deliberately increasing costs for American families to benefit donors in the fossil fuel industry.
“Amidst declining approval ratings and looting in the last election, it is no surprise that the Trump administration is unwilling to defend the fossil fuel industry’s unpopular and corrupt climate denial lies on the global stage,” Whitehouse said.
“In Belém, I hope to rally our allies to remain steadfast on climate action, including CBAM, in the face of attacks from the fossil fuel traitors who run the Trump administration. There is no path to climate security without CBAM, and we must protect that path at all costs.”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
