Jane Fonda: The sooner Trump leaves office, the better for the environment
Actress and activist Jane Fonda says she doesn’t care whether President Donald Trump faces impeachment or 2020 voters, so long as he is removed in order to address the climate crisis.
“He is an oil President. His Cabinet is an oil Cabinet,” Fonda told Don Lemon on “CNN Tonight” when asked where she stood on impeachment during an interview that aired late Wednesday. “He is bought off by fossil fuels. And a lot of people in the Senate, a lot of Republican candidates, are too.”
“We can’t solve the problem when we have elected officials who are paid by the fossil fuel industry,” she added. “And so the sooner that we move beyond him, the better, whether it’s through the elections or through impeachment or whatever.”
Fonda’s comments came following her arrests on each of the past four Fridays at the US Capitol to raise awareness about climate change. The actress previously said she had moved to Washington for four months to raise awareness about dire environmental challenges, calling her protests “Fire Drill Fridays.”
“I’m trying to show on my ‘Fire Drill Fridays,’ this is the new normal,” she told Lemon. “We have to be out there. We have to be risking arrest. We have to engage in civil disobedience because we have very little time and what has to happen is so huge.”
Fonda also voiced support for the Green New Deal — a plan to combat climate change proposed by progressive Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — comparing it to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal to spur recovery from the Great Depression.
“We did it, kind of, during the New Deal. Roosevelt was forced to put into play programs that lifted people out of poverty and despair — he left out African Americans,” she said.
“This time with a Green New Deal, everyone will be lifted, and we have to fight for that,” Fonda continued. “Which means we can’t elect anybody to office that isn’t really brave.”
