Exclusive: Rep. Waltz Slams Biden’s ‘Terrifying’ Claim Climate Greater Threat than Nuclear War

Following President Joe Biden’s remarks deeming climate change a greater threat to humanity than nuclear war, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) blasted the commander-in-chief’s “terrifying” assessment as communist China “triples the size of their nuclear arsenal and are developing hypersonic nuclear missile capabilities that we can’t defend against.”

In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News on Wednesday, Waltz, who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed outrage over the president’s comments.

“As the Chinese Communist Party triples the size of their nuclear arsenal and are developing hypersonic nuclear missile capabilities that we can’t defend against, it’s terrifying to hear the president make such a claim,” he said. 

A colonel in the National Guard as well as a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser and the first Green Beret to be elected to Congress, Waltz also slammed the president’s continued “concessions” to the authoritarian regime.

“Biden continues to make concession after concession to China in order to achieve climate goals while allowing China to conduct the most rapid military buildup in modern American history,” he said. 

The statement follows President Biden’s comments to Manhattan donors on Tuesday in which he relayed his view to a group of supporters during a Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser in New York City.

“If we don’t stay under 1.5 degrees Celsius, we’re going to have a real problem. [Climate change] is the single-most existential threat to humanity we’ve ever faced, including nuclear weapons,” the president said. 

“And so we have a real big problem,” he added.

The tone was notably different than the one he expressed in October when the president warned the world could be heading toward “Armageddon” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not joking” about threats he made to use nuclear weapons amid the war in Ukraine.

Last year, after visiting Taiwan, Waltz warned that China is preparing to go to war with the U.S. by 2027.

Previously, Waltz, noting that “the world sees weakness in the White House right now,” cautioned that “our adversaries are going to run with it and take as much advantage of it as they can.” 

Expressing his belief that the “trend lines” are heading in the direction of the United States ceding its role as a superpower, Waltz highlighted China’s military strength and advances as well as the threat it poses by having “co-opted” much of American society to achieve its ambitions.

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.