During his final debate with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ahead of the US elections on November 3, President Donald Trump described India, China, and Russia as "filthy" while speaking on the issue of climate change.

Justifying America's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2019, Trump said, "Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. It's filthy, the air is filthy. Regarding the Paris Accord, I took us out because we were going to have to spend trillions of dollars and we were treated very unfairly. When they put us in there, they did us a great disservice. I will not sacrifice millions of jobs, thousands of companies because of the Paris Accord. We have the cleanest air, the cleanest water and the best carbon emissions." In response to Trump's statement, Joe Biden argued that climate change is "an existential threat to humanity." He added, "We have a moral obligation to deal with it. We're going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to ten years."

This is not the first time that Trump has made critical remarks about India's air quality as he had earlier said in an interview in May, "China, India, Russia, many other nations, they have not very good air, not very good water, and the sense of pollution. If you go to certain cities…you can't even breathe, and now that air is going up…They don't do the responsibility." During his first presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump had also pointed out that India did not give a straight count on the number of people who died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. "When you talk about numbers you don't know how many people died in China, you don't know how many people died in Russia, you don't know how many people died in India. They don't exactly give you a straight count," he had said.

Even though Trump declared his intention to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017, he formally notified the UN of the country's decision to withdraw from the agreement in November 2019. The central aim of the Paris Agreement, which originally brought together 188 nations to combat climate change, is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Look at China, how filthy it is! Look at Russia. Look at India -- It's filthy!” - Donald Trump #Debates2020 pic.twitter.com/KajBskWyIt

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) October 23, 2020