Donald Trump Is Lying - The U.S. Doesn't Have The Cleanest Air (And His Actions Are Making It Worse)

(Cartoon image is by Milt Priggee at miltpriggee.com.)

With Donald Trump, it's always believe what I say and ignore what I'm doing. That is especially true when it comes to the environment. While he is busy deregulating and eliminating rules for a cleaner environment, he tells the public that he's the "environmental" president, and that the United States has the cleanest air in the world.

Here's part of what Hilary Brueck has to say about this obvious Trump lie in Business Insider:

President Trump has once again falsely claimed that the US has the cleanest air in the world. 

"Who's got the world's cleanest and safest air and water? AMERICA!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday, as CNN kicked off a 7-hour-long session of "climate crisis" town halls with 10 Democratic presidential candidates. 

"I want crystal clean water and the cleanest and the purest air on the planet - we've now got that!" Trump added.

This isn't the first time that Trump has falsely touted America's air as number one — he tweeted a similar statement in October 2018, along with a map from a World Health Organization report. The statement was not true then, and it definitely isn't now. 

The Environmental Performance Index, a metric from environmental scientists at Yale and Columbia that ranks 180 countries around the world, puts the US in 10th place when it comes to overall air quality (Australia is first). 

In terms of PM 2.5 pollution — a measure of ultra-fine particulate matter in the air — the country with the world's cleanest air is New Zealand, while the US ranks seventh on that list. Meanwhile, the cleanest cities in the world (in terms of particulate concentrations) are in Sweden. . . .

Despite Trump's claims about the US' air quality, air in the country is actually getting dirtier and more dangerous to breathe under his administration. An Associated Press report in June analyzed federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data and found that "there were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before" than there were during the period from 2013 to 2016. 

"There were noticeably more polluted air days each year in the president's first two years in office than any of the four years before," the AP said.

The American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report for 2019 found, similarly, that more than four in 10 Americans live in counties that got at least one "F" for unhealthy air. 

"That's 7 million more than last year's report," the report said. 

Air pollution is deadly — it kills tens of thousands of people in the US every year. Yet Trump has rolled back at least 10 air-pollution and emissions rules while he's been president, according to the New York Times.