MSNBC's Katy Tur blasted President Donald Trump for having a kind of eager ignorance when it comes to science and particularly climate change.
Tur showed a January tweet from the president where he proclaimed that because a massive cold front moved across the United States, that climate change doesn't exist. He's associating global warming with actual warming and pretend cold air means global warming isn't real.
"It's probably the dumbest tweet he's sent out," Tur said of the Trump statement.
"He loves to show off how ignorant he is!" exclaimed commentator Susan Del Percio.
The conversation comes on the heels of Trump announcing he would be creating an anti-climate change committee so that the White House can fight the 99 percent of scientists who they say are "lying."
"That in itself is disturbing," said Del Percio. "But, you know, Republicans do need to wake up. They need to start addressing issues that middle of the road Americans recognize and believe in. When you bring up the fires or the storms, and you talk to farmers who can't get a good planting done or wipe them out, those are the voters that Republicans try and talk to. They need to kind of say, all right; we'll wake up on this."
Indeed, the climate's impact on the farming industry is becoming a more significant concern to some Republicans as drought spread through California for the last several years.
"It's already affecting crops," Tur agreed. "And the president is already saying, 'Well it was cold in Washington,' or somebody saying 'I don't believe climate science because it was cold.' People are wise enough to know just because it's cold where you are; it doesn't mean it's cold everywhere."
The panel uniformly agreed that weather is not the same thing as climate, a fact most children learn in elementary school Earth Science classes.
New York Times writer Nick Confessore noted that Trump is obviously in a "default" position for the far-right that believes the problem of global climate change is too expensive to handle.
"The second thing going -- remember, if you're trying to unwind a bunch of regulations having to do with CO2 and carbon dioxide, what you need are some new studies and evidence that you can point to in court and proceedings for regulation, and this [new committee] creates essentially a set of alternative facts for the president and his backers on climate, and that's part of it."
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