Something you may have picked up in your travels is that a lot of people are deeply concerned about climate change, and the fact that inaction is putting us on a collision course with an extremely inhospitable planet. That’s inspired a wave of protests, including last Friday’s global climate strike and Monday’s Shut Down DC, the latter of which involved blocking off major intersections on Capitol Hill in an effort to get people in power to listen by bringing “the whole city to a gridlocked standstill.” However, the people currently at the epicenter of power, i.e. members of the Trump administration, are unfazed by the burning of the planet; to the extent that they believe climate change is an actual thing—which Donald Trump, of course, does not—they say things like, “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade.” You see a melting ice cap, they see the next Panama Canal! So naturally, Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s acting director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, didn’t see Monday’s demonstrations in the most positive light, if his hint that the police should’ve busted up the protest is any indication:

Yeah! How dare the cops let people exercise the First Amendment rights conservatives love to complain are under siege when a bigot is uninvited from a college campus! Where were the mass arrests? Where were the fire hoses? What this protest needed was less nonviolence and civil disobedience and more tear gas and billy clubs! Treat those people like we treat migrants at the border!

In a statement, Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Alaina Gertz told Talking Points Memo, “All demonstration participants are allowed to peacefully exercise their First Amendment Right, as long as no crime is being committed. MPD’s Special Operations Division is equipped to handle First Amendment assemblies of any stature and has been responding as necessary to ensure the safety of the protestors and the general public.” Incidentally, despite Cuccinelli’s suggestion that the police were showing “passive support” for the event, 32 people were arrested—26 by the D.C. police for blocking traffic, six more near the U.S. Capitol by Capitol Police—according to the Washington Post. Presumably he would have been less quick to tweet if he could’ve witnessed some roughing up of protesters from his desk.

Cuccinelli, last seen requesting a rewrite of the poem on the Statue of Liberty, is not just a guy who who refers to immigrants as “invaders,” but a climate denier to boot. In 2010, when he was Virginia's attorney general, Cuccinelli filed a request with the Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to get the department to reopen its proceedings regarding the conclusion that greenhouse gasses endanger public health. (A three-judge panel rejected his arguments.) The same year, he announced plans to challenge the fuel-efficiency standards laid out in the Clean Air Act (the one Trump has gutted). And for the big trifecta, in April 2010 Cuccinelli demanded that the University of Virginia turn over documents related to climate researcher Michael Mann, claiming that Mann had violated the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, without providing any evidence of wrongdoing. Cuccinelli’s request was described as having “echoes of McCarthyism,” and the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that he didn’t have the authority to make such demands.