Indians Defend Trump As Media Feign Outrage Over ‘Filthy’ Air Quality Remark
Recent global study: “More than 116,000 Indian infants died from air pollution in the first month of life.”
President Donald Trump’s recent comment about the “filthy” air quality in countries like India and China once again triggered a fake media outrage.
“Trump accused of racist slur during debate for calling India and China ‘filthy’,” UK’s Independent newspaper claimed.
The “throwaway line could end up being the most diplomatically costly of the night,” CNN complained.
President Trump made that remark while defending the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord in 2017 at the final presidential debate with Democratic candidate Joe Biden on Thursday.
“Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. It’s filthy. The air is filthy. I walked out of the Paris Accord as we had to take out trillions of dollars and we were treated very unfairly,” he responded.
Sticking with the Obama-backed Paris agreement for the next two decades would have cost the U.S. economy “close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income,” the White House said at the time of the withdrawal. While the globalist agreement penalized the U.S., it rewarded big global polluters like India and China.
As media outlets and political pundits were busy feigning outrage, many Indians took to social media to defend President Trump’s factually correct remark.
President Trump’s remarks triggered demands for better air quality in India. “U.S. President Donald Trump’s description of India as a filthy place with polluted air has unleashed calls on social media for urgent clean-up action, particularly over New Delhi, the world’s most polluted capital,” Reuters reported.
“On Friday, air pollution in New Delhi and surrounding cities was at its worst in eight months, with the air quality index surging above 300 on a scale of 500, indicating ’emergency conditions,'” the news agency reported.
The real outrage is having to breathe this air, not that for once Trump spoke the truth and called India’s air filthy
— Veena Venugopal (@veenavenugopal) October 23, 2020
“Trump is right,” Kapil Mishra, a senior politician from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, said. “Our air quality is actually filthy. In Delhi, we are breathing poison. Time for all of us to come together and deal with the real reasons.”
Imagine being outraged that Trump called the air in India and China filthy when it literally looks like this. pic.twitter.com/7MZKndyhYi
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 23, 2020
The country’s leading newspaper, The Times of India, fact-checked the U.S. president’s remark.
“The World Health Organisation’s Air Quality database (2018) had found that the world’s seven most polluted cities in terms of annual PM2.5 levels [suspended particles in air ranging from 2.5 micrometers and below] were all in India,” the daily agreed.
Reporting domestic response to President Trump’s comment, the newspaper reported that many Indians “called for introspection and action, saying India’s air quality was indeed among the poorest in the world. For many years now, Delhi has emerged as the world’s most polluted capital while the Indo-Gangetic plains figures in reports as a region with the world’s dirtiest air.”
“Following the remarks, many tweeted screenshots of the Air Quality Index in Delhi which has risen to ‘severe’ levels in parts of the city,” BBC reported.
Many Indians “agreed that capital Delhi’s air was among the most foul in the world.”
The British broadcaster also fact-checked the validity of the comment, confirming:
In recent weeks, the city’s air quality has turned “severe”, with residents complaining of breathing difficulties.
India’s dreaded pollution season has returned as levels of PM2.5 – dangerous tiny pollutants in the air – in the capital have averaged around 180-300 micrograms per cubic metre in recent weeks, 12 times higher than the WHO’s safe limits. (…)
While his comments about China may not be strictly true, they have resonated with many in India.
The air in several cities in northern India is especially bad in winter months – November to February – when several factors, such as farmers burning crop stubble to clear their fields, vehicular and industrial pollution, festive fireworks and low wind speed, contribute to what doctors calls is a “deadly cocktail of poisonous gases”. Despite the spikes in air pollution year after year, few concrete steps have been taken to control it.
“The spike in the air quality in recent weeks is bad news for India’s fight against coronavirus because several studies around the world have linked air pollution to higher Covid-19 case numbers and deaths,” BBC added. “And doctors and epidemiologists have warned that toxic air will only hamper India’s fight against the virus.”
Our air IS filthy. Every year about 15 of the 20 cities with the filthiest air in the world are in India. We’ve also done little to address this, except pass the buck around. No point being outraged when Donald Trump speaks that truth. Our air is an awful global embarrassment
— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) October 23, 2020
India reported close to eight million Chinese coronavirus cases, with the official death toll crossing 100,000. The actual figures are regarded as much higher.
“India has a population more than four times as large as the United States, but has only conducted around one-third of the number of tests,” President Trump noted at a July press conference.
Let’s stop being squeamish about what @realDonaldTrump has said about filth and filthy air in our country. Let’s not once again shoot the messenger but instead work towards altering this message. And for the dolts who are now commenting on Trump’s India visit qua this, grow up!
— SUHEL SETH (@Suhelseth) October 23, 2020
On a personal note: I am sick of Western Liberals taking offense on my behalf. Having lived for 17 years in the midst of the smog and polluted air in India’s capital, New Delhi, I can testify — or perhaps my charred lungs can — to the accuracy of President Trump’s remarks.
Far from being offended, I find it refreshing to see a world leader calling a spade a spade.
“More than 116,000 Indian infants died from air pollution in the first month of life,” a recent global environmental study showed.
Sub-Saharan Africa has a grim figure of 236,000 infant deaths, all of them being failed socialist Third World states, not First World capitalist economies.
For those on the U.S. radical left, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, blaming capitalism for ‘climate change’ are either clueless or harbor a malicious agenda. There is no greater force for conservation and a clean environment than free-market capitalism.
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Comments
Have you seen the photo of the air quality?
There are two major problems with Legal Insurrection and the biggest is the the regulars that post here are not very funny. Thank you for the laugh.
Hey, you’re the joke.
I did.
However I could not distinguish it from the photo of the dirty media.
To clean things up we must take out the TRASH/MEDIA.
MUST SEE FOR ALL.
The Big Money Behind the Narrative
—Sharyl Attkisson on Media Bias & Spin | American Thought
Leaders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwuyUcA0s8s
There is a reason why all those people want to get over here. Pollution is a big problem in those countries.
Interestingly enough, NYC has seen a significant improvement in air quality because they have switched from #2 Fuel Oil in their steam boilers to clean burning fracked natural gas. According to Scientific American, the switchover in the last 4 years is saving 40-50 lives a year.
5 years ago, NYC used almost no natural gas. Today, they use more than Belgium.
Yet Cuomo denies fracking as we sit on top of Marcellus Shale Deposits and denies pipelines to cross into NYS going north to New England and east to NY City. The goal is to replace gas and oil with solar and wind in the next 35 years as he continues to move to close down gas powered electric producers. As he makes and approves these choices, taking the state further into debt via raising revenue with higher taxing, income and business, his expectation of course is to have federal government pick up the tab. Natural resources used wisely are not the forte of either Cuomo or Calif. Gov. Newsom.
The left wars against the truth.
Air quality in India, China, Pakistan, and others is terrible.
The left is violent.
There are only two sexes/genders.
And on and on.
I recall that before the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the had to shut down the city to make the air clean enough for the athletes to function.
Absolutely true.
I had a side business at the time, small engine repair. I bought parts for Chinese made scooters, atvs and mopeds from Zongshen at the time, and I couldn’t get parts for 6 months due to the shutdown.
China is indeed filthy.
So CNN is saying the climate change argument about industrialization is done?
It’s all very well for wealth and comfortable western ‘post-industrial’ politicians to decry ‘climate change’. The problem is that they would seek to deny other nations their own industrial and economic advancement.
These are the same people who see no issue with the results of globalization. Namely the massive off shoring of US manufacturing jobs.
Closing the plants and moving the production and the jobs overseas had several downstream effects.
1. Loss of jobs
2. Loss of service sector jobs dependant upon the manufacturing jobs
3. Loss of local tax revenue
4. Depopulation of these communities
5. Decline of public services
6. Decline in ability to support smaller hospitals
7. Rise in depression and opioid use/deaths
The plants could have been retooled or overhauled with more modern and environmentally sound practices. That would have resulted in fewer but more skilled and higher paid workers at home.
Instead we have internalized all the negative economic and social problems while exporting the jobs. Importantly one vastly overlooked impact of globalization is the environmental impact. The manufacturing industry created in China, Mexico and elsewhere obviously required additional energy to support it.
Coal is cheap and the technology is simple. That’s the power generation choice in most of these nations; 3 gorges dam in China aside. Environmental standards in these nations is compared to the US very lax. Though with the formation of a more broad middle class and more prosperity these nations have been able to make some advances in environmental impact; just as we did slowly.
So the same d/progressive folks who support globalization are in fact supporting the environmental impacts that they claim to decry in spouting off about ‘climate change’.
Modern nuclear power generation would be far cleaner and simpler compared to carbon trading schemes. Of course the science is ignored in this case as it falls outside the approved narrative.
Hear
Hear!!!!!!!!!!!
The song is always the same, only the lyrics change:
-Trump claims X
-Press goes into frantic spasms trying to claim X is wrong
-People who actually know X come out and defend Trump
-Press ignores because the song is starting again
That preety much sums up the media coverage since 2016. Amazing that there are still people falling for it.
“-Press ignores because the song is starting again”
This gives them FAR too much credit. They do not ignore it because the song is starting again, THEY start the song again in hopes that everyone will ignore it.
China isn’t up to the Clean Air Act of 1964 standards (let alone any of the newer Clean Air Acts).
Under the Paris Accords, China must do nothing and is free to still build coal plants, etc.
Pointing out that many cities in India and China have horrible air pollution is now RAYCISS?
Who knew? I guess that’s why the Paris Accords exempted India and China from doing anything about their air quality, because we sure don’t want to be RAYCISS!! now do we?
LOL, these people are so lame. They have absolutely NOTHING except their pathetic cries of RAYCISS!!
What are all those Indian people doing in Portland?
Those who want to blame Capitalism for pollution should pause to remember Copşa Mică: Europe’s Most Polluted Town
https://alexharford.uk/photos/romania-copsa-mica-most-polluted-town-europe
Just because the facts back President Trump up doesn’t mean he’s not a racist for saying it.
(Unfortunately, while I’m being sarcastic, the left may take this exact point of view and be completely serious)
All the bedrocks of liberal Progressive Globalism are solidly rooted in quicksand. Everything from abortion to healthcare is based upon illogical illusion. Global warming is no different. The Paris Accords are one of the agreements which can not be looked at too closely or people will see that.
In the first place, the Paris Accords were never designed to clean up the global environment. They were nothing more than a mechanism to allow for a gross transfer of wealth from rich, developed nations, to poor and less wealthy “developing” nations. Under the Accords, the polluters were not being punished for, or even forced to correct, the pollution that they caused. Instead, they were given carte blanche to continue and those cleaning up the pollution they produced were punished.
Indians know their air is horribly polluted. They also know that is the price they have to pay for rapid economic development. And, most of them are willing to pay that price. But, the US should not have to pay for that as well.
Like we’ve been saying all along.
Paris climate accord = U.S. pays for everyone else to clean up their act.
Words of wisdom…Weasel Zippers
“ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsCab
Since the 1960s, I have been personally been bombarded by leftist end of the world claims. From “Silent Spring” to “The Population Bomb” to Global Cooling to Junk Bonds to Global Warming to Mortgage Crisis to Climate Change to Chinese WuFlu. Although there may be some truths in some of the situations, most of the effects are simply panic that are touted by leftists, Democrats, education professionals and legacy media.
Concepts and fantasies have been given the same relevancy as scientific fact even though they have not even risen to the level of theory in terms of science. And consensus of opinion does not make for fact…especially if those polled do not even comprehend any science other than political science.
While I jest about Zombie Apocalypses and such, I find no proof they are about to take place. I do, however, detect large amounts of propaganda coming from the Left with no intent other than to panic the populace and drive them into the arms of those who claim would protect them, damn the cost of personal freedoms and rights.
I had the Covid-19 and was down for 3 weeks. I was in a higher risk group especially having open heart surgery one year prior. It sucked and I suffered. But I survived as will most who contract the illness. I was not prescribed anything but was told to go home and take the usual steps as if I had the flu…which it was – albeit a stronger version of it.
I just want it on record that no amount of screaming, yelling, hair-pulling or attempts at shaming me will ever make me believe that some solution for some problem (real or otherwise) can originate from the Left. When the answer to all perceived problems begin and end with giving my rights and my money to those on the Left, then I will take my chances. Because their cure is never in my best interests.”
I’ve been to all three countries many times and they are all very dirty, China is the worst. That picture doesn’t do it justice. I was in Beijing once when you couldn’t see 25 ft in front of you.
Eastern Europe under the USSR was a dump, just a damn dump. The West is really about the only clean place on the globe. I assume Australia and NZ are as well but have never been to either.
Lying among leftists cultists is a virtue.
Ugh.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, they don’t hate Trump because he lies, they hate him because he tells the truth.
Journalists and “progressives,” but I repeat myself, think that telling the truth is racist. In reality, it’s racists to deprive people of the facts that can lead to a better life..