Today, Explained - Say goodbye to Pruitt

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

It’s official: Scott Pruitt will no longer lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Vox’s Umair Irfan explains why it doesn’t really matter who replaces him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So Johnny, the last time we spoke, you were on the cusp of buying Quip electric toothbrushes for your entire family. Well, I had this moment where I was ready to buy these things to restore my family harmony. And I went to Quip.com slash explained and the link didn't work. And I was like, oh my gosh, is Quip like done? Like, have I missed my window? And then I remembered get Quip.com slash explained and everything fell into place. Omer Irfan, you cover the environment for Vox.

That's right. The last time you and I spoke about Scott Pruitt, he was knee-deep in scandal. He's got a super-secret silent phone booth. He's got security to watch his every move. They hit the lowest bowl, went to Disneyland too. He's through it. And he's still on LinkedIn. He's through it. From there, things got even worse for Scott.

Please tell me you have another song, Sean. Say goodbye to Pruitt. Please tell me you have another song, Sean. But seriously, he had a $43,000 phone booth installed in his office. He had people driving all over the place for him, trying to find him some lotion that only the Ritz-Carlton sold, but only some Ritz-Carlton's. Is there one particular thing that did him in? Well, it's kind of like asking which snowflake caused the avalanche or which raindrop caused the flood.

But according to the New York Times, it turns out there was one guilty snowflake. What was it? It turned out it was Scott Pruitt's ambition. His reach exceeded his grasp. He flew a little too close to the sun. The thing that actually pissed off Donald Trump about Scott Pruitt's ambition. His reach exceeded his grasp. He flew a little too close to the sun. The thing that actually pissed off Donald Trump about Scott Pruitt was that he was openly fishing for Jeff Sessions' job as attorney general. Huh. And the White House had, you know, proposed this idea, but that was an internal discussion, and they didn't quite like that Scott Pruitt was discussing it quite openly.

Even though the president openly discusses his disdain for Jeff Sessions every now and then. Yeah, but he's not, you know, openly picking who's going to replace him. Fair. You know, he has some standards, right? Okay. How did Pruitt resign? Was this like another Twitter firing? He was at a 4th of July party at the White House just this week. And the reports are he didn't find out until yesterday that the president wanted his resignation. Wow. It's hard to say whether this is a firing or a resignation because he did in fact have a resignation letter submitted and turned in and the president accepted it.

Okay. The president did announce it on Twitter. What did the letter say? Well, the letter said that he was facing unrelenting attacks as the main reason why he resigned. Huh. But it was also extremely cloying. If you will permit me, I will quote the final paragraph of the letter. I will permit it.

My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people. I believe you are serving as president today because of God's providence. I believe that same providence has brought me into your service. I pray as I have served you that I have blessed you and enabled you to effectively lead the American people. Thank you again, Mr. President, for the honor of serving you, and I wish you Godspeed in all that you put your hand to. It sounds like he's still looking for a job.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what you do when you lose one job. You start lining up the next one. Wow, so the unrelenting attacks he speaks of are certainly people holding him accountable for all of these scandals? I think that's kind of what he is talking about there, you know, the allegations against him and then also some of the work that he was trying to do from his office on behalf of his wife. Huh. Can we run through some of the scandals that happened since the first set, the phone booth, the Airbnb? How much time you got, Sean?

Well, we like to put out like 20 minute episodes-ish. All right. Let's try to keep this a little bit condensed. Okay. So we found out basically from some of his aides that were interviewed by Congress that he was having them do personal errands. Like he had one of his aides look for a used Trump hotel mattress. He had them use their own personal credit cards to book hotels for him and in one instance didn't reimburse them. Oh, that's cold.

He was also asking aides to help him find a job for his wife. What kind of job? Well, first he asked to line up an interview with the CEO of Chick-fil-A so he could get a franchise for his wife. There was that. What? And then he was also pressuring his aides to talk to different lobbying groups to see if he could get a job for his wife that paid a salary of at least $200,000.

It doesn't matter the job. Just get out of the $200,000. Yeah, exactly. He was also doctoring his calendars. He had a public calendar and a private calendar and was occasionally deleting entries in the public calendar that looked like they could be potentially embarrassing. Do we know what's in the secret calendar? Well, in one instance, he did delete a meeting that he had with a cardinal that was accused of sex abuse. Oh. And also some meetings with industry lobbyists and things that, you know, probably would

not reflect well on the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Classic Pruitt. That was quite a list. Yeah. How did the public find out about all of Scott's violations and murky dealings? That's kind of interesting. You know, the Trump administration likes to blame the deep state, you know, the career officials that were actively working against them.

But in Scott Pruitt's case, it was actually coming from political appointees, people that were actually members of the Trump campaign or were appointed by Trump. Like his own staff, basically. His own staff, yeah. And one of the biggest whistleblowers was Kevin Chmielewski, who served as a deputy chief of staff. We had, at one point, three different schedules. So Kevin Chmielewski grew very frustrated with Scott Pruitt's antics pretty early on. And congressional Democrats asked him a bunch of questions about what was actually going on at the EPA.

And his answers then prompted another investigation from the House Oversight Committee. Which is to say the House was looking into Scott Pruitt's affairs. That's right. This is Trey Gowdy's committee. So Trump was losing allies by sticking by Scott Pruitt. Yeah, definitely. We had House Republicans openly call on Scott Pruitt to resign. Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana saying that Pruitt was acting like a moron. Stop acting like a chucklehead. Stop the unforced errors. Stop leading with your chin. Don't turn on the siren on your SUV just to watch people move over.

If you don't need to fight first class, don't. You had Senator Joni Ernst saying that Pruitt was swampy. Swampy. That is truly what I said. It's about as swampy as you get. Did people in the White House after all of these scandals turn against Pruitt? Well, John Kelly, the chief of staff at the White House, has long headed out for Pruitt, but Pruitt had a good one-on-one relationship with the president. Well, Scott Pruitt is doing a great job within the walls of the EPA. I mean, we're setting records. Outside, he's being attacked very viciously by the press,

and I'm not saying that he's blameless, but we'll see what happens. There were reports that Donald Trump called Scott Pruitt just to vent about Jeff Sessions and that, you know, they would kind of gripe about everything else going on in Washington. Yeah. And Pruitt, in turn, has been very open about publicly praising the president. The president did a courageous thing today. He truly put America's interests first and said, we're going to remain engaged in CO2 reduction, but we're not going to yield to a framework that was failed from the very beginning. You know, whenever Trump wanted to point to a win, he could point to Scott Pruitt and say, this is look at all the deregulation that he's doing on the environment. And so that kind of

insulated him for a long time, that being a productive member of the administration and you really don't want to bench your top point scorer right away. Where does this resignation leave the dozen or so investigations against Scott Pruitt? You know, we have the Government Accountability Office, we have the House Oversight Committee, we have the EPA Inspector General. Basically, those investigations are going to have to continue because if there are allegations of criminal wrongdoing, those have to be pursued all the way to the end. Did this damage the Trump presidency at all? It's hard to say.

I mean certainly this is where – the EPA is where the rubber meets the road in terms of policy. Like this is environmental regulations. This is stuff that affects everyday Americans and that's why people get very concerned when you start talking about who is in charge of regulating hazardous chemicals or pollution. And when you're giving the reins over to basically industry to letting the foxes run the hen house, so to speak, I mean a lot of people start getting really anxious here. And so this is where you have more grassroots activism against this administration. And so famously this week also there was that school teacher that confronted Scott Pruitt while he was eating at a restaurant, specifically saying things like, you know, you're hurting my children's health, the environment. Say goodbye to Pruitt Losing his fancy for a long loop Say goodbye to Pruitt Losing his fancy for a slice of you

Say goodbye to Pruitt And no more fancy fools Say goodbye to Pruitt Say goodbye to Pruitt By Thursday night Pruitt had resigned It's lonely out in the West Wing, cause he told his security to try to find motion from the Ritz on the government's own dime.

All of those shady meetings on a separate schedule, perfect for deleting. He's checking in on LinkedIn tonight. He asked his own aide to find a job for his wife, who was trying to run her own Chick-fil-A franchise He tried to get a mattress from the Trump Hotel He called up his staff to pick up some snacks And like, he doesn't believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming It's kinda nuts that it took so long Say goodbye to Pruitt

Mark that a dozen investigations Say goodbye to Pruitt. More than a dozen investigations. Say goodbye to Pruitt. Confronted inside a restaurant. Say goodbye to Pruitt. Turned in his letter of resignation. Say goodbye to Pruitt. Say goodbye to Pruitt. All hands are in the air.

That dirty, dirty air. Some of it's still clean, but it's dirty, dirty air. You know, Oliver's in the terrible twos you mentioned. Do you think this will be like sort of a pre-Christmas Christmas kind of sensation at the house when these things arrive one day? I'm hoping so. I got him the gold one. And I think that will be exciting. You know, it's kind of shiny and gold and it's really sleek. And so I'm hoping that I could present it to him and get him really excited. I think he'll also like the fact that it's electric and vibrates and stuff. And so I'm hoping that that will get him excited, but really

it's about my wife. I mean, I really wronged her by buying it without her and then losing it and then presuming that I could just buy another one. So I'm really excited to present it to my family and be like, here you go, guys. I'm actually not a terrible father. I'm looking out for everyone's dental hygiene, not just my own. Does your wife Izzy listen to the show today? Explain, because if she heard like the pains that you're going through right now, maybe you could turn the whole franchise around. She listens here and there. Come on, Izzy.

You're doing it wrong. Here's some fun facts for you. For every grain of sand on Earth, there are about 10,000 stars out there in the universe. If 5% of them are anything like our sun, that means there's about 500 billion suns out there that we know of. And scientists say 1 in 5 of those 500 billion suns gives life to an Earth-like planet. You know what that means, right? Aliens. Why haven't we found them yet?

That's this week on Vox's new Netflix show, Explained. The episode is out there. Today, today explained. Today explained. So who's going to replace Scott Pruitt? On Monday, Andrew Wheeler, the deputy administrator, is going to take over in an acting role at the EPA. And do we think that he's Trump's pick as a permanent replacement too? Well, Trump has, I think, 210 days under the Vacancy Act to decide whether or not he wants to keep him there. But Andrew Wheeler's position was already confirmed by the Senate. He has, I think, 210 days under the Vacancy Act to decide whether or not he wants to keep him there. Okay.

But Andrew Wheeler's position was already confirmed by the Senate. Are there any senators wishing to vote or change their vote? If not, the yeas are 53, the nays are 45. The nomination is confirmed. Before we talk about Wheeler, though, I think it might be worthwhile to mention one other person that's relevant to this discussion. His name is Robert Murray. He is a coal magnate and is also a close advisor to President Trump. Okay.

He has helped draft essentially the energy and environmental agenda for this administration, including giving Trump the go-ahead to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and this draft bailout for coal-fired power plants. Take a wild guess who Andrew Wheeler used to lobby for. Bob Murray? Yes, the notoriously litigious Bob Murray who sued the comedian John Oliver, as you may recall. Oh, that guy. That Bob Murray. Murray's company recently unsuccessfully sued to block a rule aimed at reducing miners'

exposure to coal dust that causes black lung, a disease which killed as many as 10,000 people between 1995 and 2005. Look, if you even appear to be on the same side as black lung, you're on the wrong fucking side. Does Wheeler have any experience inside the EPA? Yeah, he worked at the EPA in the early 90s and seems to understand where all the levers and knobs are. And the fact that he hasn't drawn all this negative attention will definitely work in his favor. Can we assume that he has the same style as Pruitt, that he'll run the agency in the same way, maybe minus a few scandals? Who knows? He's definitely kept a much lower profile. I mean it's been a lot harder to find out about him because he doesn't really have a public persona.

He hasn't run for office. He hasn't run a political campaign. But he has worked on the inside. He's worked in the Senate and at the EPA before. So he understands the inner workings of both sides and he knows to keep his head down and to get the work done. But in terms of policy, he's very much in alignment with Scott Pruitt. I mean this is somebody who does come from Senator James Inhofe's camp. James Inhofe famously doesn't believe in climate change and threw a snowball on the floor of the Senate. In case we have forgotten,

because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I asked the chair, you know what this is? It's a snowball. So here, Mr. President, catch this. So what you're saying is Andrew Wheeler may not believe in climate change. I wouldn't go that far, but I don't think he would consider it a priority for the administration. Certainly would not be pushing for aggressive greenhouse gas reductions as the director of the EPA. I think we can lose track of what Scott Pruitt was doing in the EPA because there were so many scandals. That's correct. But he was deregulating the heck out of the country, right?

That's right. I mean, this was one of his signature philosophies, that he wanted to de-weaponize the EPA. You know, when you think about the EPA over the last several years, before the president arrived, it was an agency that was weaponized. He wanted to roll back environmental regulations. He wanted to give industry more of a seat at the table. And recognize that we're not in the business of picking winners and losers. So the deregulatory effort that we're engaged in, 22 significant actions, by the way, over the past year, equaling about a billion dollars in savings to the U.S. economy just in a year. And he was very much in the process of doing that. It's just that he got tripped up by some badly formulated decisions that were shot down by courts.

But now they've learned a little bit about that. and now they've got a better strategy in terms of undoing some of the key environmental regulations that the Obama administration put forward. Say, for example, the Clean Power Plan. A plan two years in the making and the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change. This was the Obama administration's strategy for cutting greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants and other power plants. And the EPA is required by law to regulate greenhouse gases, so that means that if they repeal this rule, they have to come up with a replacement that withstands legal scrutiny.

And so they just put out a proposal that essentially is a much weaker rule. And the question is whether this will survive a legal challenge from environmental groups who say that it doesn't go far enough. And one of the more bigger changes that's kind of attacking the bedrock of the agency is changing how the EPA evaluates costs and benefits of environmental regulations. He's narrowing the scope of what actually counts as a benefit and is also expanding, you know, the things that have to be considered as a cost, like the economic impacts on industry and then some of the lost revenues and things like that. In essence, he's shifting the balance such that it becomes much harder to implement a new regulation

and that you have to very much consider the feelings of the industry or the sector that's being regulated. Does it even matter who replaces Scott Pruitt, Andrew Wheeler, someone else? I mean, it sounds like people like this Bob Murray character have already spelled out the Trump administration's policies on the environment. That's right. I mean, a lot of this is not necessarily going on at the administrator level. This is going on at the level of underlings or at divisions that, you know, are actually doing the day-to-day drafting of this legislation or these orders in terms of how they're deregulating the agency's work. And that's going to continue. There's a lot of momentum baked in. They've had, you know, more than a year of the Trump administration at the EPA to get it staffed and to start these policies. And that's likely to continue. There's no reason to believe that they'll suddenly

lose momentum now that Scott Pruitt is out. In fact, you know, without the additional scrutiny of Scott Pruitt, you know, without him bringing all this unwanted attention, they could probably continue about this work more readily without, you know, facing, you know, environmental lawsuits or people wearing Scott Pruitt paper mache heads outside their office. I mean, when was the last time you heard from Ben Carson? When was the last time you heard from Ryan Zinke? These guys are still getting the job done, but they're doing it with a much lower profile. And that may be the way forward for the EPA now.

Humer Irfan writes about energy and the environment for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Johnny, what's the organizational system at your house? Like, how are you going to keep four different sets of free refills from just, you know, collapsing out of your vanity or something? Yeah, we're going to have to reform some of our inventory stuff in order to accommodate this. But we have a nice shelf where our toothbrushes are now just kind of jammed in. And I'm looking forward to getting rid of the old system. And I can just see it now, kind of them all lined up,

all their different colors with their various different stories and dynamics and their symbolic importance shining forth from my bathroom. I can't wait for you to report back.