California Gov. Jerry Brown has been rushing to recruit other state and local governments to sign onto their own nonbinding climate agreements in defiance of President Donald Trump. | Valerie Macon/Getty Images Jerry Brown compares Trump supporters to cave dwellers

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday called President Donald Trump’s approach to climate change and North Korea “stupid and dangerous and silly,” sharpening his criticism of the president and comparing his supporters to cave dwellers.

“They’re both kind of very similar,” Brown said at a climate change event in New York. “You should check out the derivation of ‘Trump-ite’ and ‘troglodyte,’ because they both refer to people who dwell in deep, dark caves.”


Brown, the Democratic governor of the nation’s most populous state, has been rushing to recruit other state and local governments to sign onto their own nonbinding climate agreements in defiance of Trump. At an event coinciding with the United Nations meeting in New York, Brown said Trump’s election has made it easier to promote climate-related policies, with the rise of a “real adversary that is not believable, is not credible.”

“President Trump is the null hypothesis, which he’s proven,” Brown said. “Everything he’s doing is … stupid and dangerous and silly. I mean, come on, really, calling the North Korean dictator ‘Rocket Man'? … He is accelerating the reversal through his own absurdity.”

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While acknowledging he was making “lemonade out of a lemon,” Brown predicted Trump will “fail very soon” in the face of economic and other international forces.

“These other powers are going to gang up on Mr. Trump, and he’s going to find out, ‘You’re fired,’” Brown said.

Trump has called climate change a hoax and earlier this year announced he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Many Republicans have argued the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is unduly burdensome.

Brown, touching off several days of climate talks, said of the opposition to Trump on climate change, “It takes what we’re doing today and this week, and all the other things that we have to do to finally put the nail in, I don’t want to say in Trump’s coffin. … That’s a tweet, so I better not do that. But we’re getting there. We’re making change. So I’m very optimistic in the face of Washington’s absent leadership.”

