On Friday morning, Donald Trump devoted part of his “executive time” to a defense of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
What Trump is spouting here is the official Republican “Save Pruitt” narrative. The narrative that says, “Sure Pruitt is pate-deep in paranoid delusions, gets off on staggering wastes of taxpayer money, runs his department like a banana republic and is the poster boy for corruption, but he’s enacting the Trump agenda, so it’s all good.”
But what does that mean? Just how is Pruitt doing “a great job?” Well …
Destroying American health, denying the clear verdict of science, diverting funds to support political work, and attacking the evidence of climate change at every turn. That’s what Republicans mean when they say that Scott Pruitt is doing a “great job.”
Oh, and Donald Trump is absolutely interested in keeping Scott Pruitt around to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general, either as a first step in sacking Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller, or as a firewall between Mueller’s report and Congress. It’s why Trump is so determined to keep Pruitt in the cabinet, no matter what he does.
Of course, Republicans also love Pruitt for destroying the Clean Water Act, gutting the Clean Air Act, redefining the waters of the United States in a way that opens wetlands to pollution from fracking and factory farms, and generally refusing to take any action that protects the environment or public health while jetting around the world to promote fossil fuels.
But you might think they could find someone who would be just as awful for the environment, but not spend his time trying to find out how the EPA can build him a secret sub-volcano lair.