President Trump said Wednesday that he wants to campaign against the Green New Deal.
“I really don’t want to say anything about it. I want them to keep going forward with it because I want to campaign against it,” he said of the sweeping climate resolution during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
{mosads}The resolution, introduced last month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), is focused on achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the United States while creating millions of “good, high-wage jobs.”
Trump previously called the initiative “the most preposterous thing.”
“You look at this Green New Deal. It’s the most preposterous thing,” Trump said during a Fox Business interview earlier this month. “Now I don’t want to knock it too much right now because I really hope they keep going forward with it, frankly, because I think it’s going to be very easy to beat.”
Republicans have seized on the initiative ahead of 2020 elections.
Every Democratic senator running for the White House in 2020 has co-sponsored the upper chamber’s Green New Deal resolution, though the party remains split over the proposal’s cost and whether its goals are realistic.
The Senate voted 0-57 on taking up the resolution, with 43 Democrats voting present. The measure was expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed to overcome the procedural hurdle.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lashed out at the proposal ahead of Tuesday’s vote, calling it an item on the “far-left wish list that many of our Democratic colleagues have rushed to embrace.”