To put an exclamation point behind just how many different scandals Trump EPA head Scott Pruitt has gotten himself mired in: even Trump's White House aides are fretting that he's making them look bad.
Senior White House staff members are encouraging President Trump to fire Scott Pruitt, his embattled Environmental Protection Agency chief, according to two top administration officials. While Mr. Trump has until now championed Mr. Pruitt, the officials say the president’s enthusiasm may be cooling because of the ongoing cascade of alleged ethical and legal missteps.
Over the past few months, as Mr. Pruitt’s problems have mounted — he is now the subject of at least 11 federal investigations and [...]
Eleven! The man's actions have resulted in 11 different federal investigations! The list of his transgressions is beginning to look like the devil's own shopping list.
Why he has held on as long as he has without Trump giving him the axe remains a mystery. Trump has been easily angered by aides who get more attention than him or whose scandals he believes are casting an undue pall over his presidency. The Times suggests it’s his eagerness to gut EPA regulations uniquely pleasing to Trump's fossil fuel pals. And if any of those big polluters happen to be at Mar-a-Lago on one of the many weekends Trump happens to be there, they could indeed be prodding him to let Pruitt run amok as long as he can bear.
Now that Pruitt is making daily headlines, though, Trump may not bear it much longer.
At the White House on Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, expressed confidence in Mr. Wheeler but declined to say whether Mr. Trump intended to fire Mr. Pruitt in the near future.
You know someone is in the doghouse when Sarah Sanders won't definitely rule out them being fired tomorrow. And it may have been Pruitt aides shopping bad stories about fellow Trumpian Ryan Zinke that finally began to sway Trump.
As a bonus quote from the Times, apparently added in to see if we were paying attention: Here's the Republican expert the Times rang up to give a quote about Pruitt being on thin ice with many in the Republican Party. See if you can spot what's wrong with this word picture.
“Republicans like what he’s done, but they don’t like how he’s done it,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who worked for the former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and the former majority leader Tom DeLay. “He has made some major mistakes and doesn’t seem to care that much about them. They have a lot of tolerance, but it has its limits.”
Hmm. There sure is a lot to unpack, right there. Quite a lot, indeed.