No, Joe Biden’s Climate Plan Isn’t Green New Deal — Despite Deceptive Screenshots
Donald Trump and his supporters are sharing a deceptive screenshot from Joe Biden’s campaign site to falsely give the impression that Biden lied when he said, in the debate, that his plan is not the Green New Deal. However, even the screenshots make it clear that Biden is only mentioning Green New Deal as a launching point before describing his own plan. Also, it wasn’t news to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, despite what some Trump surrogates might tweet.
Donald Trump’s campaign press secretary tweeted it. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted it. Donald Trump retweeted. They all shared a screenshot that purported to prove Joe Biden lied in the debate when he said that his plan for climate change was not the Green New Deal, but the Biden plan.
Joe Biden LIED to every single American tonight.
This is directly from his website.
He calls @AOC’s Green New Deal a ‘crucial framework!’
That means he wants to go even farther and kill even more jobs. pic.twitter.com/x1Od2Alzuo
— Marjorie Taylor Greene For Congress🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) September 30, 2020
BIDEN tonight: “The Green New Deal is not my plan.”
BIDEN website: “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework…”
So what is it, Joe? You can’t have it both ways.
Comrades Bernie and AOC, and the American people deserve an answer. https://t.co/o4CDirKzu3
— Ken Farnaso (@KLF) September 30, 2020
However, even in the screenshot, it’s clear that Biden isn’t declaring his support for the Green New Deal — he’s saying it’s part of the idea. On his campaign site, the paragraph in the screenshot can indeed be found:
Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face. It powerfully captures two basic truths, which are at the core of his plan: (1) the United States urgently needs to embrace greater ambition on an epic scale to meet the scope of this challenge, and (2) our environment and our economy are completely and totally connected.
Note that even in this paragraph, Biden is comparing the Green New Deal to his own plan: “It powerfully captures two basic truths, which are at the core of his plan…”
However, the site also goes on, a lot. Below that paragraph, he continues to talk about the importance of addressing climate change — then actually shares his plan, including how he plans to pay for it. There’s no point in reproducing the entire plan here (this is the link if you would like to read it in entirety) but it includes having Congress set milestone targets, incentivizing clean energy innovations, rejoining the Paris accord and supporting workers and communities.
Trump and surrogates also pretended that this was an attack on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that Biden had somehow snuck behind her back to say he doesn’t support her climate plans. Trump tweeted that Biden was “throwing [Ocasio-Cortez and others] to the wolves.” Kelleyanne Conway, who is still tweeting for Trump after leaving her position to deal with family matters, tweeted as though she was alerting AOC and Ed Markey to some new information.
"The Green New Deal Is Not My Plan" – @joebiden
"I don't support the Green New Deal"
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 30, 2020
Ocasio-Cortez responded, saying that this wasn’t new information and that she and Joe Biden are on the same team, working to mesh together their different ideas for addressing climate change.
This isn’t news, Kellyanne.
Our differences are exactly why I joined Biden’s Climate Unity Task Force – so we could set aside our differences & figure out an aggressive climate plan to address the planetary crisis at our feet.
Trump doesn’t even believe climate change is real. https://t.co/Bj8SMD9Syf
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 30, 2020
Ultimately, it’s another case of the Trump team taking a portion of Biden’s words out of context, deceptively editing media, and pretending that they’ve proven something that simply isn’t supported by the facts.