Greta Thunberg has brushed off Donald Trump’s sarcastic Twitter attack and said ‘I knew he was going to say something about me’ after she tore into world leaders at the United Nations.
The U.S. President wrote that Thunberg ‘seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future’, clearly meant as a mocking response to her emotionally charged speech.
Trump had already enraged the 16-year-old by upstaging her when he arrived at the UN Climate Summit on Monday.
But appearing on a Swedish talk show from New York today, the teenage climate activist said Trump’s ridicule ‘doesn’t make a difference’.
Greta Thunberg, pictured appearing on a Swedish talk show from New York, said Donald Trump’s mockery of her UN climate speech ‘doesn’t make any difference’
Donald Trump sarcastically mocked Greta Thunberg in a tweet (above) after her impassioned plea for climate action at the UN Climate Summit on Monday
Thunberg has already adopted Trump’s description of her for her own Twitter profile.
Asked about the tweet by talk show host Fredrik Skavlan on SVT, she said in English: ‘I mean, you can interpret it in different ways, many different ways.
‘I knew that sometime he is probably going to say something about me and it was like, it doesn’t make any difference in a way.’
Asked if she read any sarcasm into his tweet, she said: ‘Of course I do… but of course he’s going to write that.’
The 16-year-old, who today picked up an £83,000 ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for her activism, also addressed her icy ‘death stare’ at Trump which has already become a viral meme.
The talk show audience laughed when they were shown the picture of Thunberg glaring silently at the President’s back when he walked into the room.
U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore, who was also on the Swedish show, joked that Trump could ‘feel’ the icy stare even if he could not see it.
The environmental activist changed her Twitter biography yesterday afternoon in response to Donald Trump’s criticism
Greta Thunberg’s ‘death stare’ at Donald Trump (above) as he upstaged her at the UN Climate Summit on Monday has already become a viral meme on social media
Thunberg said: ‘I was stopped because suddenly he came in and security said “you have to step to the side”.
‘Then I just wondered what was going on and then he showed up, I think I was very shocked,’ she said.
The Swedish programme was recorded this morning and will be broadcast in full on Friday.
Trump, who has previously claimed that climate change is a Chinese hoax, upstaged Thunberg by walking into the UN Climate Summit on Monday.
The President had not been expected to show his face at all, but attended briefly to listen to Indian leader Narendra Modi.
He was not there to hear Thunberg’s impassioned plea for action in which she repeatedly asked world leaders: ‘How dare you?’.
Greta Thunberg appeared on Swedish talk show ‘Skavlan’ with filmmaker Michael Moore and presenter Fredrik Skavlan to discuss her row with Donald Trump
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, pictured at the UN in New York City this week, has won an £83,000 ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for her environmental activism
‘This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,’ she said.
‘Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you? ‘You have stolen my dreams, my childhood with your empty words.
‘Yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
‘The eyes of future generations are on you and if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this.’
Thunberg arrived in New York last month after a two-week journey by yacht, as she refuses to fly for environmental reasons.
She has promised to join a protest in Montreal this Friday and is due in Chile for a climate summit later in the year.