Environmentalists are an emotional and petty lot.
Never was there so much anguish in the aftermath of a presidential election as there was from the environmental left with Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton a year and a half ago.
For the first several months after Trump was sworn into office, environmental activists posing as constituents infiltrated congressional town halls all over the country to decry the president.
“Resistance is here to stay, welcome to your hundredth day,” climate activists chanted in front of the White House nearly a year ago while waving their Greenpeace paraphernalia in the air.
That was the emotional. Now we’re on to the petty.
Scott Pruitt was one of President-elect Donald Trump’s first cabinet-level nominees when Trump announced him as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2016. Trump’s opponents immediately denounced Pruitt as unfit for the post given he was a “climate change denier.” Nevertheless, that following February, the Senate confirmed Pruitt by a 52–46 vote.
Since arriving at the EPA, Pruitt has rolled back many of the Obama-era regulations, including those on fossil fuels and coal-fired power plants. These regulations granted the federal bureaucracy more power over states and municipalities.
This has not set well with the career bureaucrats within the EPA, and now we’re on to the incredibly petty.
Critics and self-appointed watchdogs have hit Pruitt for a $50-a-night rooming arrangement, as if Capitol Hill rent for $1,500-a-month was going to be the cherry on top of the ice cream Sunday that would sway Pruitt’s environmental policy to favor evil corporate-billionaire executives who want to pollute the air and water to maximize profits.
These critics have also called into question Pruitt’s travel expenses, which are comparable to his Obama administration EPA predecessors.
It has not stopped Alabama’s “Mr. Work with Both Sides” Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) from joining the fray. Jones toed the Democratic Party line when asked about Pruitt.
“I think he’s in real trouble,” Jones said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” “I think that there is a perception is not good at all. The fact that he has been – has a controversy with expenses, which I think is one of the things that people are just frustrated with, with cabinet members who seem to want to use taxpayer dollars to fund a life, their own personal lifestyle. And now on top of this, the — you know, not just the $50, but the fact that it was going to energy company lobbyists, that – it just looks so bad. And I think it seems that he may be on his way out.”
It isn’t as if Pruitt is operating in uncharted territory. Obviously, conservatives would like to see less government where possible, and for many the abolition of the EPA altogether. However, these charges are phony.
Disappointed and defeated environmentalist activists are targeting Pruitt because he is effective. Pruitt’s opponents are not willing to accept that elections have consequences, and attempting to discredit him for doing things at the EPA the way they have always been done is one of the few weapons they have left in their paltry arsenal.
Pruitt’s real crime here is failing to see this coming.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.
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