'Tree hugger' Donald Trump gets mauled on Twitter over planting ceremony

Updated

Folks online called out President Donald Trump over his contempt for the environment after he took part in a tree-planting ceremony outside the White House on Monday.

Trump joined his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to symbolically shovel dirt around a young European sessile oak, which Macron brought as a gift to Trump during his state visit to the U.S.

The sapling was highly symbolic, as it came from Belleau Wood, some 60 miles northeast of Paris, which was the site of a World War I battle where more than 9,000 American Marines died in combat.

But on Twitter, many people noted how Trump’s participation in the planting could be seen as being at odds with his climate change-denying agenda.

Trump has previously called climate change a Chinese hoax, appointed climate change skepticScott Pruitt as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and in June announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.

Here’s how some people responded:

  • This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Advertisement