Kerry: Global Warming Skeptics Should Be ‘Disqualified’ from Holding Office

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

MITCHELL: “So I asked him how he squares that with the political statements made by some of the candidates this year, including Republican front-runner Donald Trump.”

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MITCHELL: “You have a leading Republican candidate who tweeted out that on the first day of fall, the first cold weather, that this was proof that we need more global warming. You have Republican candidates who are not only silent on the subject, they are climate deniers, and even candidates who led the way in 2008, the nominee, is now silent on the subject because of tea party challenges to himself and to others. In the Democratic Party, you have many labor interests that are pressing also against restrictions on coal and other fossil fuels. So you've got gridlock in both parties and an election year where this is not even being discussed.”

KERRY: “Well, it will be discussed. I'm confident of that. Once we get through the primaries, because I know that whoever it is nominated by the Democratic Party is going to make this a very important part of our choice for the country. But beyond that, you know, I have heard this, I have debated it on the floor of the Senate, I have heard it, I testified before the Environment Committee, so I know all the counter arguments to it. But when I hear a United States senator say I'm not a scientist so I can't make a judgment or candidate for president, for that matter, I'm absolutely astounded. It's incomprehensible that a grownup who has been to high school and college in the united States of America disqualifies themselves because they're not a scientist when they learned the Earth rotates on its axis but they're not a scientist, where they learned the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and it does so 24 hours a day, you can run the list of things we know science tells us happens, and we accept it every single day, and to suggest that when more than 6,000 plus peer-reviewed studies of the world's best scientists all lay out that this is happening and mankind is contributing to it, it seems to me that they disqualify themselves fundamentally from high public office with those kinds of statements. And I think the American people will decide that this year. Because the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of doing something about climate change.”

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