Donald Trump regrets 'bizarre mistake' of Paris climate withdrawal, Richard Branson claims

Sir Richard Branson has claimed Donald Trump regrets the “bizarre mistake” of withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement.

The Virgin empire founder said he hoped the US President was rethinking his decision to pull the country out of the global climate agreement which almost 200 countries signed in 2015 in an effort to tackle global warming. He called on President Trump to do all he could to eliminate the ailing US coal industry.

Speaking in Brooklyn on Friday, the billionaire said both businesses and cities were adamantly in favour of shifting to low-carbon energy and this made Mr Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement “very, very strange”.

“With climate change, it’s America first and our beautiful globe last, and that seems incredibly sad,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling that the president is regretting what he did. Maybe his children and son in law [adviser Jared Kushner] are saying, ‘Look, I told you so.’ Hopefully, there is a positive change of mind.”

America is on the brink of becoming one of only three sovereign nations in the world not to be part of the deal. The other countries are Nicaragua who feels the accord does not go far enough and Syria which is plagued by civil war.

Branson said his businesses would join the “We are still in” campaign – a group of hundreds of businesses, cities and universities devoted to sticking to emissions reduction targets.

“Trump had hundreds of the most influential business leaders in the world speaking to him and he ignored them, so there’s no guarantee that he’ll change his mind,” he said.

“Who knows what goes in there,” he added gesturing to his head. “The Paris decision was a bizarre mistake.

“You have people in America who believe the world was made 5,000 years ago. There are some strange people out there who have got into heady positions in the American government. You have the strange position of a cabal of people with very influential positions in America making these decisions.”

This is by no means the first time the tycoon has taken aim at President Trump. In March, he said President Trump is an “embarressment for the world”, claiming the president's first two months in office had been “disastrous” and predicting the world leader would only last a maximum of one term in office.

What’s more, in October he recounted an encounter with the fellow businessman several years back where Mr Trump allegedly vowed to spend the rest of his life destroying five people. Branson warned President Trump’s “vindictive streak” was proof of why he should not be the next US president.

“Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help,” Branson recalled of the lunch at Mr Trump’s Manhattan apartment in a blog post. “He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.

“What concerns me most, based upon my personal experience with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House. For somebody who is running to be the leader of the free world to be wrapped up in himself, rather than concerned with global issues, is very worrying.”