Day 444: Trump Promises Paranoid and Wasteful Pruitt Going Nowhere
Donald Trump gave a vote of confidence to embattled Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt in a Saturday night tweet.
Pruitt, who was staunchly anti-EPA before being tapped to head the department — and has shown no sign of changing his stance since his appointment — has sought to slash environmental regulations and has powerful friends close to Trump. After his tenure began with some casual perjury, rumors in recent months have centered around Pruitt that he has been angling to be the new attorney general should Trump choose to dump Jeff Sessions.
Trump’s tweet references a few of Pruitt’s controversies.
Pruitt has spent an exorbitant amount of taxpayer money on things that would have immediately ousted them from their position in any other administration. For instance:
- $160,000 or more in first class, charter and military airfare (Pruitt apparently flies coach when he is forced to pick up the fare.)
- $3,000,000 and counting for a 20-person, full-time security team.
- $43,000 for a private phone booth in his office.
- $9,000 to sweep his office for listening devices.
Pruitt also wanted $70,000 for furniture, including a bulletproof desk, a request that was denied.
These costs join a number of other scandals involving Pruitt.
- Pruitt leased a Washington D.C. condominium from an oil lobbyist’s wife at a cut-rate $50 per night charge that may have run afoul of ethics laws. The company hired by the lobbyist then had their pipeline expansion plan approved by the EPA.
- Pruitt claimed he had no knowledge how two long-time aides received bonuses of over $28,000 and over $56,000 after they were previously denied such pay bumps by the White House. According to reports, Pruitt personally directed EPA staff to approve the raises using an obscure provision in the Safe Water Drinking Act, allowing him to bypass White House approval. Pruitt gave the aides — who worked with him for many years in Oklahoma — the substantial raises despite their job duties remaining completely unchanged.
- Numerous EPA officials have been reassigned or demoted when they questioned Pruitt’s spending decisions or other curious behavior.
Scott Pruitt is spending taxpayer money left and right on absurd things while having shady ties to lobbyists. Any of these issues should have left him looking for a job in the private sector a long time. However, despite Trump repeatedly swearing he’d drain the swamp, by defending Pruitt, Trump isn’t just ignoring the swamp as it fills, he’s holding the hose.
444 days in, 1018 to go
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