U.S. President Donald Trump seemingly trolled climate activist Greta Thunberg following her impassioned speech at the UN Climate Action Summit Monday.
Trump retweeted a four-minute long video of Thunberg, where the 16-year-old lambasted older generations and world leaders for betraying the youth in accelerating the growing threat of climate change.
“She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” the president said on Twitter.
In the scalding speech, Thunberg — who sailed across the Atlantic from Britain to New York in a zero-carbon emissions boat — said: “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?”
Cameras caught Thunberg giving Trump an icy stare as he arrived at the U.N. gathering earlier in the day.
Trump , who in the past has called climate change a “hoax,” gave scant attention to the issue that dominated the day on Monday.
After scheduling one of his administration’s marquee events – a forum on religious freedom – during the U.N. climate summit on Monday, he dropped by the climate event for 14 minutes in a surprise visit. He did not speak and left after listening to remarks from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Angela Merkel, the outgoing German chancellor.
Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron offered far different reactions on Monday to Thunberg , who began skipping school in her native Sweden a year ago to protest inaction on climate change.
Merkel met with Thunberg and posted a photo of her impromptu summit with the young activist.
Macron appeared to respond to Thunberg less than an hour later when he addressed the gathering in French and called on his fellow leaders to take more ambitious action given the urgency of the climate threat
“We’ve seen the emotion this morning,” Macron said. “We cannot let our youth spend every Friday demonstrating for the climate and simply answer, ‘Everything is fine, we are doing everything right.’ We are still far from the account.”
California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a former Democratic presidential candidate, reacted to Trump ‘s tweet about Thunberg with one of his own early Tuesday morning.
“By rallying the world to save itself, she’d already make a better @POTUS than you,” he wrote, adding: “(Also, she’s not a liar, a crook, or a whiny toddler.)”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
