Yesterday, Donald Trump fired his EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt. Given Pruitt's record, his dismissal should come as no surprise. What is surprising is that, just last month, Trump praised Pruitt's job performance. Richard Wolfe writes:
Just last month, he used his protective cloak to single Scott out for special treatment. “EPA is doing really, really well,” he said. “Somebody has to say that about you a little bit. You know that, Scott.”
But performance reviews change like the weather in Trumpland. Consider the other "stars" who have left the Trump Show:
First a Bannon, then a Scaramucci. You fire an Omarosa, then you lose all Hope. You reject a Rex but you can’t get your Gorka back in the bottle.
It’s almost like there’s some invisible hand steering this bizarre sequence of hirings and firings, but we can’t figure out what the hand is trying to do. Or if it’s a left or right hand. Or if either hand knows they are connected through the same torso.
That said, its Pruitt's record that really needs to be examined:
In year one, he rolled back regulations protecting clean water. He scrubbed away references to climate change and stopped collecting data on methane emissions. He blocked regulations designed to cut emissions from cars and power plants.
And the man who replaces Pruitt is no gift to the environment:
Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist . . . used to be chief of staff to James Inhofe, the Republican senator for Oklahoma, perhaps the loudest and dumbest climate denier on Capitol Hill.
Wheeler is the kind of fossil fuel guy who enjoys the Onion’s parody of him as a pulsating black sludge. Making America Great Again does not extend to the land, water and air we know as America.
Wheeler will now serve as the acting administrator, and likely successor to Saint Scott, in much the same way as a fox looks after a henhouse. As if by magic, the fossil fuel industry has taken over the agency that was supposed to protect our environment from the worst effects of that industry. But their new man is enough of a Washington insider to avoid the personal scandals that brought down his old boss.
Yep. The man who pledged to drain the swamp has now filled it with so much crud he can walk on the water.
Image: twitter
