Earlier this year, as part of his continued effort to burn the earth to the ground, Donald Trump assigned National Security Council director William Happer the important task of discrediting the assessment, made by federal intelligence agencies multiple times since he took office, that climate change poses a grave threat to national security. With fossil fuel profits at risk, Trump knew he couldn’t trust just any old kook with the job, and in Happer, found a guy who made many of his totally batshit advisers look sane. (In 2014, Happer told CNBC that “the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” and, three years later, wrote in an email that the vilification of carbon dioxide also “differs little from . . . the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels.”) And, according to the Associated Press, he’s been earning his keep!

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A Trump administration national security official has sought help from advisers to a think tank that disavows climate change to challenge widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, according to his emails. The request from William Happer, a member of the National Security Council, is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act and provided to The Associated Press. That request was made this past March to policy advisers with the Heartland Institute, one of the most vocal challengers of mainstream scientific findings that emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are damaging the Earth’s atmosphere.

In a March 3 email exchange Happer and Heartland adviser Hal Doiron discuss Happer’s scientific arguments in a paper attempting to knock down climate change as well as ideas to make the work “more useful to a wider readership.” Happer writes he had already discussed the work with another Heartland adviser, Thomas Wysmuller.

In a May 2018 email with Wysmuller, Happer calls NASA chief __ Jim Bridenstine__’s change of heart on climate change—from questioning the science to accepting it— “a puzzle” and describes scientifically established rises in temperatures and sea levels due to climate change “part of the nonsense,” urging Bridenstine, copied on the message, to “systematically sidestep it.” The following February, the same month he was officially tasked with discrediting the risks of climate change on behalf of the government, Happer emailed NASA deputy administrator James Morhard to relay a complaint about the information included on NASA’s website from an anonymous climate denier who, and we would never suggest this but other’s might, could very well be Happer himself. “I’m concerned that many children are being indoctrinated by this bad science,” said the email. Happer’s previous comments about climate change, in addition to the Hitler/ISIL/Soviet ones, include “If plants could vote, they would vote for coal”; “serious damage. . . will be done to us, and indeed to the whole world, by cockamamie policies to ‘save the planet’ from CO2”; and “Warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind.”

Shockingly, scientific organizations aren’t thrilled with Happer’s work with the federal government thus far. “We have concerns that there appear to be attempts by a member of the National Security Council to influence and interfere with the ability of NASA, a federal science agency, to communicate accurately about research findings on climate science,” Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advance of Science, told the Associated Press. “These people are endangering all of us by promoting anti-science in service of fossil fuel interests over the American interests,” said Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University climate scientist. “It’s the equivalent to formulating anti-terrorism policy by consulting with groups that deny terrorism exists,” Matthew Nisbet, a professor of environmental communication and public policy at Northeastern University.

While the the National Security Council did not make Happer available to discuss the emails, his buddyies at the Heartland Institute defended him, saying NASA’s insistence on calling climate change a global threat “is a disservice to taxpayers and science that it is still pushed by NASA.”

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Trump doesn’t care if Xi meets with him at the G20

The people who will be affected by him subsequently slapping more tariffs on China might, but screw those guys!

Trump said “it doesn’t matter” if Chinese President Xi Jinping agrees to meet with him later this month to restart negotiations over trade because the U.S. is collecting billions of dollars in tariffs on goods from the country. “If he shows up, good,” Trump told Fox News on Friday. “If he doesn’t -- in the meantime, we’re taking in billions of dollars a month.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to raise tariffs if Xi doesn’t meet with him at the G-20 leaders’ meeting June 28-29 in Osaka, Japan. Trump is committed to attending the G-20 regardless of whether he meets with Xi, U.S. officials said. Trump said on Wednesday that he had no deadline for China to return to trade talks.

The president, who still refuses to admit that U.S. companies and consumers are the ones who pay for the tariffs, added: “Eventually, they’re going to make a deal, because they’re going to have to. Look, they’re paying hundreds of billions of dollars.”

What are you up to the last week of July?

If you‘ve been looking to attend a music festival featuring the beats of one of the most powerful people on Wall Street, look no further! David Solomon, the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs, “has scored a slot to DJ at Tomorrowland — a decadent European dance-music festival known for its undulating throngs of naked, sweaty, drug-fueled revelers.” Hopefully Lloyd Blanfkein can make it.

Elsewhere!

Jared and Ivanka, Who “Sacrificed” Everything to Join the White House, Made $135 Million in 2018 (The Hive)

US farmers experimenting with hemp as China trade war drags on (Reuters)

“Play It Cool” and Get Paid: How Wall Street Got Rich Off Fresh Market (The Hive)

Record Drop in Morgan Stanley Gauge Sounds Economic Alarm (Bloomberg)

Hottest Crypto Is Up 330% This Year and Its Name Isn’t Bitcoin (Bloomberg)

Trump says his UK visit was the most fun Queen had in 25 years (NYP)

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— Exclusive: Gabriel Sherman reveals Donald Trump and Maria Maples’s pre-nup

— Mitch McConnell’s wife gave him a special reelection present: $78 million in federal funding

— The horrifying truth laid bare by Trump’s screwball visit to the U.K.

— Inside the multi-million dollar, totally messed up renovation of the Plaza Hotel

— From the Archive: The murder of a hedge-fund manager that stunned New York society

— Why Chernobyl’s unique form of dread was so addicting

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