WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump's declaration last month that climate change is a "serious subject" marked the completion of a yearlong shift away from his outright denial of the global threat _ a shift, according to one former aide, driven by 2020 politics.
William Happer, one of the nation's most prominent climate change skeptics who worked on the National Security Council until September, believes that "staff and handlers" convinced the president that his continued dismissal of climate science offered him no political upside _ and would likely exact political cost _ in the upcoming general election.
It is a disingenuous shift, according to Happer, who remains convinced from their White House meetings that Trump still believes that climate change is a hoax.
