Compared to Trump’s revealing off-script commentary on Charlottesville Tuesday, his infrastructure executive order went relatively unnoticed. While the idea of streamlining the permitting process certainly sounds noble, the reality of easier approval for dirty projects is certainly not.
More specifically, Trump’s decision to revoke an EO from Obama that directs the federal government to take future flood risk, amplified by climate change, into account deserves attention. Not only is it “irresponsible” and “not fiscally conservative,” according to Miami Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, it’s also patently hypocritical. After all, as New Republic’s Emily Atkins points out, Trump’s own golf course in Scotland requested permission to build a seawall to prepare for rising seas driven by climate change. Yet Trump doesn’t want to protect taxpayers’ pocketbooks the same way he does his own.
Like Trump’s reversal of Obama-era protections against power plants dumping toxic waste into our water, this is “just another example of this administration trying to undo everything the Obama administration did, whether it makes any sense or not,” as the president of American Rivers said about the flood rule revocation.
This sentiment is an echo of how a European diplomat recently described Trump, that his “only real position” is to take the opposite position of Obama, with whom “he is obsessed.” (Don’t believe it? Trump even had a bikeshare station removed that Obama installed at the White House. Even tiny traces of Obama’s legacy aren’t safe.)
The Trump Doctrine then, so much as it actually exists, is to be the Ctrl+Z presidency. Hopefully the next administration will be able to undo the damage with more grace and aplomb than Trump. And they almost certainly will, because it would be hard for them to show any less dignity.
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