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The White House dubbed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse a scam victim after he publicly complained the Trump administration would not fund or support his junket to the COP30 climate change conference in Belém, Brazil this week.
The Trump administration largely ignored the confab of global climate change leaders; a stark contrast to former President Joe Biden sending Clinton confidant John Podesta to lead a substantial U.S. delegation to COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2024.
“Sadly, Senator Whitehouse has fallen victim to the biggest scam of the century: the Green New Scam,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said of Whitehouse, D-R.I.
“The senator can foolishly spend time and money attending this radical ‘climate’ conference, but the Trump administration refuses to waste taxpayer dollars.”
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Whitehouse spoke at a press conference on the House side of the Capitol Thursday with the blessing of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
Whitehouse held up his COP30 badge and lamented that it did not label him a representative of the “United States of America” but instead “Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment: GLOBE.”
That group was co-founded by then-Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn., and the late Sen. John Heinz III, R-Pa. in the 1990s, and Whitehouse said that without support from Secretary Marco Rubio’s State Department, he relied on a House of Representatives “energy and environment coalition” to facilitate his travel.
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Whitehouse said the confab – to which California Gov. Gavin Newsom also traveled – showed a “failure of the United States to be present.”
“For the first time in history that I’m aware of, the State Department refused to support or facilitate my travel or my credentialing. My credentials don’t say United States of America,” he said, adding that it is typically State Department or executive branch protocol to support “CODELs” or congressional delegations.
“[T]he State Department refused to support this – that’s how bad the Trump administration has become.”
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Whitehouse said President Donald Trump is ignoring COP30 because he does not effectively represent the U.S. government on climate matters.
“He represents the fossil fuel industry, and specifically his big billionaire fossil fuel donors,” Whitehouse said, before pivoting to his contention at the conference that “carbon pricing” – which critics call “carbon taxes” – is crucial.
“The good things that have come out of COP[30] so far mean that the plane crashes higher up the mountain. But if you want to get the plane over the mountaintop safely, you’ve got to have carbon pricing.”
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The Ocean State Democrat said he warned European COP30 attendees to hold firm if Trump attacks their climate commitments.
Jeffries later echoed Whitehouse, saying Trump is showing an unwillingness to address “issues of importance to the American people,” including climate change and affordability.
“The Trump administration and the United States government chose not to be involved and engaged at the most recent conference, essentially ceding leadership on this issue in the world to our rival: the Chinese Communist Party — while leaving America and Americans behind,” Jeffries said.
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Meanwhile, Daniel Turner, founder of Power The Future, a Virginia group that focuses on energy policy advocacy geared toward industry effects on workers and rural communities, said Whitehouse was out of line to make such an issue of the matter.
“It was bad enough that while the nation was reeling from the Democrats’ government shutdown, Senator Whitehouse took a tropical vacation and praised the communist Chinese,” Turner said.
Turner appeared to reference a Fox Business segment in which Whitehouse filmed himself at COP30 lamenting his lonely official presence, and saying how large the Chinese official “pavilion” was.
“I will never kiss the boots of the Communist Chinese that use slave and child labor to build crappy wind and solar which drives up the price of American electricity,” Turner said, saying it showed how “out of touch ‘blue-blood, Whites-Only-Country-Club Whitehouse’ is.”
In 2021, Whitehouse refused to apologize for his family’s membership in a Newport, R.I., club that was accused of, but denied, retaining a discriminatory membership policy.
“I think the people who are running the place are still working on that, and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet,” Whitehouse said at the time.
Whitehouse further defended his presence at COP30 in a statement this month, saying that Republican “corruption” is deliberately raising costs on American families to the benefit of donors from the fossil fuel industry.
“Amidst sinking approvals and a shellacking in the most recent elections, it’s no surprise the Trump administration is unwilling to defend the fossil fuel industry’s unpopular and corrupt climate denial lies on the global stage,” Whitehouse said.
“In Belém, I hope to rally our allies to stay steady on climate action, including CBAM, in the face of attacks from the fossil fuel villains running the Trump administration. There is no pathway to climate safety without CBAM, and we must protect that pathway at all costs.”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
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