Neil DeGrasse Tyson Slams Hypocritical Climate-Change Deniers Who Viewed The Eclipse

After being a frequent guest on “The Daily Show” when it was hosted by Jon Stewart, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson made his first appearance with host Trevor Noah on Monday night. Noah wasted no time grilling Tyson about a controversial tweet he made about the recent eclipse.

When asked if he was being overly political about the eclipse, Tyson responded with a scientific explanation. “It’s not political if one speaks objective truths,” he said. But Tyson was rightfully irked that the entire country gathered together to celebrate an event predicted by scientists while many still choose to reject climate science.

“Well, I just thought, ‘There’s everyone organizing their lives around attending and viewing one of nature’s great spectacles, and I don’t see people protesting it,’” Tyson said. “I don’t see people objecting to it. I don’t see people in denial of it. Yet methods and tools of science predict it. So when methods and tools of science predict other things, to have people turn around and say ’I deny what you say,’ there’s something wrong in our world when that happens.”

Tyson also took the opportunity to slam the climate-change-denier-in-chief, President Trump. Trump once said that climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese, has pursued many policies considered to be anti-science, and has scrubbed mentions of climate change from many government websites. “You have the freedom to deny whatever you want,” Tyson said. “But if you rise to power and base legislation on something that is not objectively true, that is the beginning of the end of an informed democracy.”

Tyson continued his crusade against climate change deniers on Friday with a tweet about Hurricane Harvey.