President Donald Trump‘s reelection campaign posted an edited video in order to lie about Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren‘s remarks at a CNN climate change town hall, falsely insisting that she and the Democrats are coming for “Americans’ straws, cheeseburgers, and light bulbs.”
In a tweet that was flagged by Politico’s Alex Thompson, the so-called “Trump War Room” posted a clip of Warren that cuts off in mid-answer, along with their claim that “Elizabeth Warren and the radical Green New Deal Democrats have their eyes set on Americans’ straws, cheeseburgers, and light bulbs to ‘change our energy consumption.’ And that’s just the beginning!”
Trump War Room clips just the first part of the answer but doesn’t include the full thing. https://t.co/0gq30QJcp0
— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) September 5, 2019
But the full exchange makes clear that Warren was saying the opposite, that while she supports individual action on those issues, they are distractions from policies aimed at carbon pollution.
On Wednesday night, moderator Chris Cuomo told Warren “Today the president announced plans to roll back energy-saving lightbulbs, and he wants to reintroduce four different kinds, which I’m not going to burden you with, but one of them is the candle-shaped ones, and those are a favorite for a lot of people, by the way,” and asked “But do you think that the government should be in the business of telling you what kind of lightbulb you can have?”
“Oh, come on, give me a break,” Warren began, as Cuomo asked “Is that a yes?”
“No,” Warren replied, adding that “there are a lot of ways that we try to change our energy consumption, and our pollution, and God bless all of those ways. Some of it is with lightbulbs, some of it is on straws, some of it, dang, is on cheeseburgers, right? There are a lot of different pieces to this. And I get that people are trying to find the part that they can work on and what can they do. And I’m in favor of that. And I’m going to help and I’m going to support.”
Then, in remarks that were cut out of the Trump campaign video, Warren went on to add “But understand, this is exactly what the fossil fuel industry hopes we’re all talking about. That’s what they want us to talk about.”
Warren said that the industry wants “to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers. When 70 percent of the pollution of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air comes from three industries, and we can set our targets and say, by 2028, 2030, and 2035, no more. Think about that. Right there.”
“Now, the other 30 percent, we still got to work on. Oh, no, we don’t stop at 70 percent. But the point is, that’s where we need to focus. And why don’t we focus there? It’s corruption. It’s these giant corporations that keep hiring the PR firms that — everybody has fun with it, right, gets it all out there — so we don’t look at who’s still making the big bucks off polluting our Earth.
She concluded her remarks by saying that “the first thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to attack this corruption head-on in Washington and say enough of having the oil industry, the fossil fuel industry write all our laws in this area. No more. No more.”
Warren made no mention of government policies on straws or cheeseburgers, and specifically answered “no” to Cuomo’s question about light bulb standards.
UPDATE: Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh tells Mediaite “In order to claim the video was unfairly edited, Elizabeth Warren would have to oppose regulating lightbulbs. She does not. She supports regulating lightbulbs. Therefore complaints about the video are pointless.”
The Trump campaign is mistaken about Warren’s remarks during the climate change town hall. Warren’s response to Cuomo’s specific question about the light bulb standards opened with “no.” The transcript of that exchange (emphasis added):
CUOMO: But do you think that the government should be in the business of telling you what kind of lightbulb you can have?
WARREN: Oh, come on, give me a break. You know…
CUOMO: Is that a yes?
WARREN: No.Watch the clip above, via CNN.
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
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