As the Trump presidency draws to an end, President Donald Trump’s daughter/ adviser Ivanka seems to be searching for something with a positive sheen to claim on behalf of the Trump administration. On Twitter this Tuesday, she touted the fact that annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. have apparently dropped by 9.2 percent this year — and in her initial post, she totally failed to mention a major driver of this decline: the pandemic. With untold numbers of cars and other modes of transportation off the roads amidst the staggered national effort to curb public gatherings and thwart the virus, obviously greenhouse gas emissions have slumped.
Quite simply: it’s startlingly ignorant for Ivanka to talk as though the Trump administration’s policies are somehow automatically responsible for the positively spun development of lowering rates of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. She tweeted the following message:
‘FACT: Greenhouse gases generated by the U.S. will slide 9.2% this year, tumbling to the lowest level in at least three decades’
FACT: Greenhouse gases generated by the U.S. will slide 9.2% this year, tumbling to the lowest level in at least three decades. @EPA
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) November 24, 2020
Did she want people to just ignore the COVID-19 pandemic? Did she want them to ignore the economic catastrophe that has unfolded on the Trump team’s watch due in significant part to their failure to meaningfully thwart the spread of the virus? What exactly was the play here?
On Twitter, CNN’s Jake Tapper noted Ivanka’s glaring omission. Quoting an article from The Washington Post, Tapper noted that the “biggest drop in emissions this year came from the transportation sector, where emissions fell 14 percent, dragged down by a steep drop in air travel and automobile trips.” Ivanka responded by trying to point to declining emissions rates before the pandemic set in, although she didn’t factor population growth into one of the figures that she cited. She noted that per capita CO2 emissions were lower in 2019 than they’d been in decades — but obviously, adding more people to the equation would necessarily lower a per capita carbon emissions rate. Broader issues remain. Furthermore — Ivanka’s original comments were about the sharp drop in CO2 emissions in 2020, rather than a comparatively slower prior drop.
US CO2 emissions in 2019 were the lowest they have been since 1992. Per capita emissions were lower in 2019 than they’ve been at any time since at least 1950. https://t.co/iXebSmyXRR
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) November 24, 2020
On Tuesday, Ivanka also touted growth at the stock market in an apparent attempt to boost the Trump administration’s profile. She documented this growth the day after the General Services Administration finally officially confirmed Joe Biden as the president-elect, clearing the way for his team to obtain federal government resources. The correlation between this and the stocks couldn’t be clearer.
Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 30,000 for the first time ever!
Congratulations America! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/pQFRdxaIHL
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) November 24, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response below:
