Trump claims nuclear war is a greater threat to the world than climate crisis

Donald Trump has downplayed the threat of the climate crisis in his latest interview with Fox News, insisting that international unrestand the danger of nuclear war are of far greater concern, declaring: “The only global warming that matters to me is nuclear global warming.”

The Republican presidential candidate and convicted felon sat down with the conservative network’s anchor Sean Hannity to lambast Joe Biden for emphasising environmentalism over the threat of nuclear war.

“I love this country. I don’t want to see this country get into a nuclear war and be so badly damaged. What we say won’t matter. This won’t matter. This place won’t matter, nothing will matter because practically nothing is going to be here anymore,” Trump told Hannity, outlining his nightmarish vision of man-made apocalypse.

“The level of power, the level of power with the weapons and weaponry – that’s real weaponry, that’s worse than the weaponry we were talking about a little while ago – this is the ultimate… This is obliteration. Maybe world obliteration.”

He continued: “And we have a man that is not capable of even discussing it. He talked the other night about… that nuclear doesn’t matter so much. What matters is, think of this, global warming.

“The only global warming that matters to me is nuclear global warming because that’s the real deal. He said it’s an existential threat. He loves the words ‘existential threat’. That global warming is an existential threat.

“And he doesn’t know why. What is it? It’s weather… and I’m all for that, you know what, in a certain way, in a very powerful way, I’m an environmentalist. I want clean air, I want clean water. But this is not the existential threat.”

Trump concluded: “Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it. Nobody can. The whole world won’t be able to recover from it. And he’s talking about... in 400 years from now, the oceans will rise by an eighth of an inch.”

The former president’s comments came after it was revealed that the world had just seen its hottest May on record, completing 12 months in a row that have set new global temperature records for the time of year.

Those findings inspired UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres to warn on Wednesday: “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell. The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s.”

Trump’s dismissal of climate change as “weather” while claiming to be an environmentalist may not stand up to scrutiny but his warning about the threat of war is not without merit, given that Russian president Vladimir Putin has threatened to supply long-range missiles to enemies of the West in retaliation for American and European support for Ukraine.

Elsewhere in Trump’s interview with Hannity, the former president maintained that, while he himself remained a “very legitimate” candidate for the White House despite being convicted as his New York hush money trial, the US had become a “banana republic” by prosecuting him.

He also boasted about his role in overturning Roe v Wade, extended his attacks on Biden to his handling of illegal immigration at the US southern border and rebuked Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer for his criticism of Israel, saying the Jewish legislator had “become like a Palestinian”.