Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) mocked former Vice President Joe Biden, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, for his newly unveiled climate proposal.
Gaetz coined the term “Plagiarizing Joe Biden” when asked about the proposal, noting its similarities to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) so-called Green New Deal.
“We could even get a new nickname,” he said. “We could call him Plagiarizing Joe Biden. Well look, I mean Joe Biden once bragged that foreign leaders were calling asking him to run for President and now we know why. The Biden plan would unilaterally disarm the American economy, exporting carbon-based jobs to emerging economies where they’re not going to put off their own prosperity for a generation for any environmental concern.”
“Now, I do believe the climate is changing,” Gaetz continued. “I think that humans have an impact on it, but the right approach is the one taken by President Trump to stand up for American innovation by putting tariffs on the Chinese when they steal our intellectual property and hollow out American businesses. So I think that has far more to do with the ultimate environmental consequence protecting the American innovator than trying to regulate our way through this challenge with a plan that Joe Biden didn’t even write. His staffers went and took it off of media reports and other interest group websites.”
Later in the segment, Gaetz said the plan was a sign of the lack of inspiration behind the Biden campaign. The Florida Republican predicted President Donald Trump would “trounce” Biden if Biden is the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.
“Look, this is an old tired candidate with old tired ideas,” Gaetz added. “He had to go and carbon copy and paste these because there is no inspiration behind the Biden campaign. I hope he is who the Democrats nominate. Donald Trump will trounce him in the general election.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor