Environmental group labels Trump as ‘Dirtiest of All Time’

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A major environmental group that supports presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is launching its first spots as part of a $14 million ad-blitz to target President Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his record on combating climate change.

And the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is also labeling the president as the “Dirtiest of All Time” on its 2020 Dirty Dozen list of federal candidates who take sides against the environment.

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LCV announced that its campaign kicks off on Monday and will run through the start of the Democratic National Convention in mid-August. The group said that it’s teaming up with the leading pro-Biden super PAC Priorities USA to run digital spots in the key general election battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania starting this week, with ads in Florida kicking off next week. LCV’s program also includes direct mail with which it says will target 1.58 million "environmental swing voters."

“He denied the warnings of the coronavirus crisis,” the narrator in the new ad charges.” Ignored his medical experts, and we’re suffering because of it.”

The spot is the latest by pro-Biden groups to target the president for initially downplaying the severity of the coronavirus crisis and then bungling the federal government response to the pandemic.

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The Trump campaign and allied organizations have defended the president from these attacks, pointing to his Jan. 31 move to place restrictions on travel from China, where the virus originated, to spotlight the actions he’s taken.

The narrator in the LCV ad goes on to spotlight that “Donald Trump ignored 97 percent of climate scientists, NASA, and the Department of Defense who agreed that climate change is real.”

The ad then uses a clip from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in December of 2015 saying “it’s a hoax. It’s a hoax.”

Earlier this year, the president said that “nothing’s a hoax” regarding climate change. He made his comments as he announced the relaxing of regulations in a major environmental law.

“I want clean air; I want clean water. I want the cleanest air with the cleanest water. The environment's very important to me," Trump told reporters in January before adding that "I also want jobs. I don't want to close up our industry.”

But LCV Victory Fund senior vice president Pete Maysmith  -- as the group unveiled their ads – argued that “voters need to know that Trump denies the threat of climate change just like he denied the threat of the coronavirus and it’s the public who pays the price.”

And he charged that “in the fifty-year history of the Dirty Dozen, no elected official has ever posed a bigger risk to our environment and our health than Donald Trump and he clearly deserves the title ‘Dirtiest of All Time.’”