Trump dismissed a proposal for a sea wall around New York City as “costly, foolish and environmentally unfriendly.”

Twitter has mocked President Donald Trump after he dismissed a proposal for a sea wall around New York City as “costly, foolish and environmentally unfriendly.”
Trump tweeted about the proposal on Saturday night after The New York Times reported that a six-mile-long barrier was among the options the Army Corps of Engineers is looking at to protect the region severe storms like Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the area in 2012.
Although the report said the estimated cost of the barrier was $119 billion, Trump tweeted: “A massive 200 Billion Dollar Sea Wall, built around New York to protect it from rare storms, is a costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly idea that, when needed, probably won’t work anyway,” Trump tweeted.
“It will also look terrible. Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!” he added.
The tweet led to a flurry of responses mocking the president with references to his rhetoric about the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Build the sea wall and make the merfolk pay for it,” Republican political strategist and Trump critic Rick Wilson joked, referencing the president’s 2016 campaign message that he would have Mexico fund his border wall.
On-camera political host Bryan Tyler Cohen added: “Shorter: Trump admits walls won’t work,” while journalist Helen Kennedy responded: “What if we get Mexico to pay for it?”
Shorter: Trump admits wall won’t work.
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) January 18, 2020
What if we get Mexico to pay for it?
— Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) January 18, 2020
“Mops and buckets”
We lost 44 of our neighbors in Hurricane Sandy. You should know, you lived here at the time.
Your climate denial isn’t just dangerous to those you’ve sworn to protect — it’s deadly. https://t.co/VUNPh8eMrD
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 19, 2020
Others pointed out the president’s hypocrisy, citing a report that said Trump had gotten approval to build two sea walls to protect a golf resort he owns in Ireland.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also responded to Trump’s tweet, saying the president’s denial of climate change was “deadly.”
“We lost 44 of our neighbors in Hurricane Sandy. You should know, you lived here at the time,” he tweeted. “Your climate denial isn’t just dangerous to those you’ve sworn to protectit’s deadly.”
Despite the flurry of criticism the president received online for dismissing the sea wall, his assertion that “it probably won’t work anyway,” might be accurate. Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, wrote a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers on October 23 warning that their estimates of future sea levels are too low. “Offshore storm barriers simply cannot protect all of our coastal communities from the myriad challenges posed by climate change and are incompatible with a healthy, thriving New York Harbor,” Stringer wrote.
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Trump has spent years flip-flopping on the topic of climate change. “Global warming is an expensive hoax!” Trump tweeted in 2014 before conceding two years later that he is keeping an “open mind” on the matter.
But then in 2017, Trump announced that he was pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
More recently, he has hit out at teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who he crossed paths with at the United Nations climate change summit last year.
A clip of Thunberg glaring at Trump at the summit shortly after she made an impassioned speech slamming the lack of action by politicians to the threat of climate change quickly went viral.
In December, the president tweeted: “Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”