U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview airing Sunday that President Donald Trump believes that the climate is changing.
"I just want to be clear on this, you're not willing to acknowledge that calling climate change a Chinese hoax is just a big box of crazy," Tapper said, referencing one of Trump's previous tweets about global warming.
In 2012, Trump tweeted that the "concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
Haley pushed back against Tapper and said that the president believes that the climate is changing and that pollutants are part of the equation.
"That is the fact. That is where we are. That's where it stands. He knows that it's changing. He knows that the U.S has to be responsible with it. That's what we're going to do. Just because we got out of a club doesn't mean that we don't care about the environment," Haley said.
Trump received backlash from liberals and environmentalists last week after he withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord. The agreement, which took effect last November, involved Obama pledging to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 26-to-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.