Former President Donald Trump coined the term 'Green New Scam' during a 2023 rally to criticize climate initiatives. Since his second presidency began, the phrase has permeated official statements as part of a strategy to erode trust in climate action. Experts describe it as classic propaganda aimed at reshaping public perceptions.
The phrase 'Green New Scam' originated on December 16, 2023, in Durham, New Hampshire, during a campaign rally. Flanked by supporters, Trump criticized Biden's climate policies, initially calling them 'Green New Deal nonsense.' He then improvised: “The Green New Deal that doesn’t work. It’s a Green New Scam. Let’s call it, from now on, the ‘Green New Scam.'” The crowd approved, and Trump added, “I do like that term, and I just came up with that one. The Green New Scam. It will forever be known as the Green New Scam.”
In the nine months since Trump started his second term, the capitalized phrase has featured in White House fact sheets, press statements, and across federal agencies and Republican congressional rhetoric. Communications professor Renee Hobbs noted, “He’s quite effective at creating sticky phrases and using repetition to amplify them. That’s the classic propaganda strategy, right? You repeat the phrases that you want to stick, and you downplay, ignore, minimize, or censor the concepts that don’t meet your agenda.”
This fits a broader effort to suppress climate-related language and data. Federal agencies have avoided terms like 'clean energy,' 'climate science,' and 'emissions.' Entire climate adaptation pages have been removed from government websites, 400 experts on the next climate report were dismissed, past reports vanished, CO2 monitoring projects face cuts, and the EPA has stopped collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from companies.
Trump escalated internationally at last month's United Nations General Assembly, spending 10 minutes deriding renewables and climate efforts. He warned world leaders, “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” and labeled climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and the carbon footprint “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”
Despite this, about 70 percent of Americans acknowledge global warming, and only 23 percent prefer Republican environmental plans. Hobbs explained conspiracy theories' appeal: “Conspiracy theories are catnip because they postulate this malevolent actor who’s doing something secretly to hurt people.”
The administration aligns language with policy, canceling clean energy funding while investing $625 million last month to rescue the coal industry and fast-tracking fossil fuel infrastructure. Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson said, “If you can control vocabulary, you’re controlling thought.” Hobbs suggested countering with emotional appeals, like linking climate to rising costs, rather than facts alone.