The surprise appearance at the first 2024 Republican presidential debate wasn’t Donald Trump — it was climate change. The man to beat ultimately stuck to his plan to forgo the undercard debate in Wisconsin (Trump does, after all, have a big day on Thursday), and instead made his pitch to the American people in a pre-recorded interview that aired on Twitter, prompted by softball questions from Tucker Carlson.
But just because Trump wasn’t asked by the Fox News moderators on live television to raise his hand if he believes in human-caused climate change (we know what he’d say, anyway) doesn’t mean issues of interest to Heatmap readers didn’t pop up organically. Here are seven wild quotes from Trump’s Republican debate sideshow about climate and energy:
1. “The happiest moment for somebody in an electric car is the first 10 minutes. In other words, you get it charged, and now for 10 minutes. The unhappiest part is the next hour because you’re petrified that you’re not going to be finding another charger.”
2. “Hybrids are pretty good, actually!”
3. “Electric cars can be fun if you drive short distances, and you want to have whatever, and you have plug-ins everywhere you go. They could be fine.”
4. “Now their new thing is your heating systems in the house. They don’t want you to have a modern-day heating system. They want you to use a heating system that will cost you at least $10,000 to buy and won’t work very well.”
5. Trump: “Many of the states have so much water, you know, it comes out of heaven, and the water pours down, you have it. It’s there. It’s going to go wherever it goes, into the oceans, whatever. It’s not like a big problem. Now in some states, they have a problem. You know. You have some desert areas and all. That’s okay. But they have sinks where no water comes out. You turn it on, no water comes out. No water comes out of the shower. No water is allowed to go into the washing machine for your dishes or for your clothing. And I voided all of that.”
Tucker Carlson: “Wait, they have sinks where no water comes out?”
Trump: “Sure, they have restrictors. When I say ‘no water,’ very little water.”
6. Trump: “You want to wash your beautiful hair. And you stand under a shower and the suds never go — the water comes out very slowly. I’m sure you’ve seen this. It usually takes place in new hotels and new homes.”
Carlson: “Yeah, you take a drill and take the limiter out.”
Trump: “Well, you can, but now they make it so you can’t do that so easily. They have a restrictor. It’s called a restrictor and it restricts the water from coming out.”
7. “I met with the head of Whirlpool. They were practically going out of business during my administration and they said to me from Ohio — incredible, great state. I love Ohio. And they were really doing badly because they were dumping washing machines all over, mostly from South Korea but also from China. And he was explaining it’s a terrible situation … and on top of it, the government won’t let us use water in their machines. He shows me a quarter of a bottle of water. That’s supposed to be washing clothing. And I freed it all up. And I put tariffs on these countries that were selling and the machines coming into the country … They love me in that part of Ohio!”
AccuWeather
Maxar Open Data Program via Gupta et al., CVPR Workshop Proceedings. Lütjens et al., IEEE TGRS