Rep Smith uses House floor speech to decry New York Times column as ‘fake news’

Rep Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, blasted a New York Times column blaming climate change for the plight of starving children in Africa as “fake news.” In a brief House floor speech, Chairman Smith dismissed columnist Nicholas Kristof’s documentation of severe droughts in the island nation of Madagascar as hyperbole aimed at “climate alarmists.” “A good example of fake news appeared in Sunday’s New York Times. It’s a column headlined, ‘As Trump Denies Climate Change, These Kids Die,’ ” Chairman Smith said. “This may be a new high, or maybe a new low, for climate alarmists and their exaggerations.”