Has she lost her mind?
On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, expressed her frustration on Twitter regarding the ongoing summer heat wave affecting communities nationwide, specifically calling out “MAGA Republicans.”
According to Fox, her tweet was triggered by a post from the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, which accused “MAGA Republicans” of exacerbating the climate crisis. The post cited recent media stories highlighting the high temperatures in the U.S. and mentioned how Republicans had voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, a $739 billion climate package introduced by Democrats and signed into law by President Biden in 2022.
Clinton’s tweet read: “Hot enough for you? Thank a MAGA Republican. Or better yet, vote them out of office.”
It’s important to note that this comes at a time of above-average summer temperatures, and while Democrats tend to attribute this to climate change, there are differing opinions among climate experts. Ryan Maue, a former top climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, pointed out that heatwaves have occurred throughout history and aren’t solely a consequence of climate change.
Maue remarked on Twitter: “Without climate change, July’s summer heat in the U.S. Southwest would have been ‘virtually impossible.’ I guess that’s true if you memory hole 1925, 1930s, 1950s, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2012, 2020, etc. and the rest of the almanac.”
He also noted that Clinton’s tweet came shortly after a New York Times editorial urging leaders to “politicize the weather.”
According to the FOX Forecast Center, this week was anticipated to be the hottest of the summer due to a shifting upper air pattern that would bring dangerous heat and humidity to the East Coast.
Around 75% of the nation was projected to experience warmer-than-average temperatures on Wednesday and Thursday, impacting over 260 million Americans across the country, except for the Pacific Northwest and parts of the northern Rockies.
Though millions of Americans were under Excessive Heat Warnings or Heat Advisories, it was not expected to break any records.