-As coronavirus cases
continue to surge in states across the country,
President Trump has been quietly continuing
his all-out assault on the environment,
so we decided to take a break
from the breaking news of the day
to see how Trump is taking advantage of a global crisis
to make things even worse for vulnerable Americans.
This is "The Check-In."
♪♪
[ Bell dings ]
President Trump has been a colossal failure
at the one thing Americans are most desperate for him to do --
contain the coronavirus.
He hasn't increased testing.
He hasn't dealt with the economic fallout
and you could be forgiven for thinking
he hasn't been doing anything at all.
However, he has been very successful
at rolling back environmental regulations
and weakening major conservation laws,
all while Americans
have been distracted by a global pandemic
because, instead of pulling back on pollution
when lungs are having their worst year
since "Mad Men" went off the air,
Trump has actually been doubling down on his dangerous agenda.
According to reports...
It's when Trump seems to be doing nothing
that he's at his most dangerous.
It's like when your kids are upstairs
and they're super quiet for way too long.
You know you're about to wallpaper
over some Sharpie.
That is not the path of a hurricane, Tyler!
But, of course, whenever Trump does something quietly,
it's only because everything else he's doing is so, so loud
that it seems quiet in relation.
Trump can't be quiet.
He'd be a terrible ninja.
[ As Trump ] I came through the window.
You probably didn't hear me
because I'm quiet like the wind.
That's what my karate master told me.
Even worse, Trump is using the coronavirus pandemic,
which has disproportionately affected people of color,
to push through anti-science policies
under the guise of creating more jobs,
jobs that rare rarely go
to the people most hurt by these policies.
-Air pollution is linked to higher
coronavirus death rates,
along with many other health problems
and air pollution is usually worse
in areas with larger minority populations.
-The folks with the smallest carbon footprints
are the ones who will feel the most pain.
-We have just been beat down.
People are devastated.
I don't think anybody's life is worth a job.
-If people of color and low income
who are most affected by the issues
are never in the rooms
where the decisions are being made,
we are going to continue
to have two different worlds,
two different realities.
-No surprise that Trump doesn't care
what happens to people of color, but he also doesn't believe
it's happening at all,
as evidenced by this tweet from 2014, when Trump wrote...
In fact, Trump's view that global warming is a hoax
is one of the only stances he's been consistent on.
That, and there's no such thing as a tie that's too long.
[ As Trump ] I like it to just
brush the top of the knee.
For example, he repeated his same bizarre claims,
sprinkled with some self-aggrandizement,
at the last G7 summit, when a reporter questioned
Trump's skepticism about climate change.
-In a nutshell,
I want the cleanest water on Earth.
I want the cleanest air
on Earth.
And that's what we're doing.
And I'm an environmentalist.
A lotta people don't understand that.
I have done more environmental impact statements, probably,
than anybody that's -- I guess I can say definitely
'cause I've done many, many, many of them --
more than anybody that's ever been president or vice president
or anything even close to president.
-You can't claim you're an environmentalist
just because you look like a compost heap.
Also, what do you mean you've done more on the environment
than anybody that's even been close to president?
You know you're not close
to president, right, you're there?
I mean, Al Gore was close to president
and he, at least, made a full movie about the environment.
I should note, if there was a movie with Trump,
"A Convenient Lie" would be a good title.
[ As Trump ] Did I write a check
to Stormy Daniels?
You know, if I did, I don't remember it.
But, of course, Trump doesn't
actually want clean air and water.
In fact, one of his first actions
he took as president proved that.
In early 2017, he signed an executive order
to start the process of repealing
an Obama era clean water regulation
known as the Waters of the United States rule.
The rule limited the amount of pollution
that developers and landowners could dump into our waterways
and Trump's repeal, which environmentalists called a...
...was finalized less than a year ago.
And, in the last few weeks, Trumped bragged about that
at two separate events, while telling the same weird story
about how people were allegedly so overwhelmed with emotion
because of his actions.
-We stopped the egregious abuse
of the Clean Water Act.
When I signed that legislation, I had many farmers
and construction people standing behind me,
people that haven't cried since they were a baby,
some of them never even when they were a baby,
and they were crying.
We did the U.S. waters. You saw that.
The U.S. waters act. That was a big one.
Grown men that had never cried, even when they were a baby,
they were standing behind me when I signed that bill
at the White House and they were crying.
They were crying because we gave their life back to 'em.
-For all the lying Trump does,
you'd think he'd get a little better at it.
All you did was sign an order.
Why are you acting like a revival tent preacher?
[ As Trump ] I healed
her husband's rotted leg
and, oh! How she cried and thanked me.
Oh! She was more tears than woman, she was.
And also, nobody was crying. Check it out.
[ Camera shutters clicking continuously ]
-Huge. -Very.
-It's huge! -Thank you.
-Maybe he mistook that guy sweating
and thought his neck was crying.
Why does he say some of them never cried
even when they were babies?
I mean, even for a weird man,
that is a weird detail to add.
It really hammers home what a egomaniac what he is.
It's not enough to make someone cry like a baby.
He has to make them cry
for the first time in their lives.
[ As Trump ] I turned them from Data
into Dawson. And, yeah, that is
back-to-back nights referencing a show
that went off the air in 2003.
Either way, the truth doesn't stop Trump
from using that ridiculous anecdote
to promote yet another harmful initiative gutting the...
It's a 50-year-old conservation law
that requires federal agencies to take into consideration
the environmental impact of infrastructure projects
before they're approved.
Everything from how it would affect local wildlife
to projected greenhouse gas emissions.
It also allowed residents to weigh in on the plans.
But, now, public review would be limited, in order to...
And, once again, Trump used the coronavirus as cover
for why something like this needs to be implemented.
And, look, I think we can all agree
we need better roads and bridges.
But I don't think Trumps wants the roads to be better.
He just wants them to be straighter.
-There's a highway in a certain state,
short road -- not even a highway, I guess,
more of a roadway -- and they put in --
It was a straight line from point to point.
By the time they finished it, 18 years later,
it was this...
It cost tens of times --
it cost many, many, many times more than the original.
It's a dangerous roadway because there's turns.
You gotta be in good shape.
You gotta be wide awake to make those turns.
You gotta see those things.
You have to see the guardrails. Bumm.
-I can't believe I have to say this,
but you should be wide awake when you drive,
no matter how many turns there are on the roads.
[ As Trump ] Under Trump, our roads are gonna be so straight,
you can daydream and even doze off in some places.
Also, he thinks you have to be in good shape
to be able to turn a steering wheel?
That might explain the shape he's in.
He thinks driving to the gym is the workout.
"Alright. Made it!
Time to hit the showers!"
Now, by ignoring the environmental effects
of major construction projects,
Trump is, once again, harming communities
that have already been much worse off
throughout his presidency.
Critics point out that these new rules...
And, if it wasn't clear before this,
the differences between the two choices
we have in November couldn't be more obvious.
For example, the same week Trump touted
his pollution-permitting proposals,
Joe Biden announced his clean energy plans.
-Joe Biden announcing his own plan
to invest $2 trillion over four years
on clean jobs and infrastructure.
-These investments are
a win-win-win for this country,
creating jobs, cutting energy costs,
protecting our climate.
When Donald Trump thinks about climate change,
the only word he can muster is "hoax."
I think about climate change,
the word I think of is "jobs."
-He's right. The work we need to do
to slow climate change will create thousands of new jobs,
like building solar panels and wind farms.
The problem with a president like Trump is
that everyone he knows and is beholden to
got rich on old jobs, like coal mining and oil pipelines
and invading Ukraine.
The Trump presidency will be over, someday,
but the sad reality is that
the environmental effects will be permanent
and that becomes everyone's problem because,
if we don't start taking climate change seriously
and making major changes,
we're all gonna be crying like babies,
even if we never cried like babies, in the first place.
I wanna make that point.
That's a very important point to add.
Not everyone cried when they were a baby.
This has been "The Check-In."
♪♪
[ Bell dings ]