Even Republicans Want To Shitcan Scott Pruitt. Eventually. Maybe. Next Year?
Jim Inhofe won't even throw him a snowball
Poor sad grifter and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is certainly used to people hating him, which is why he was given a ginormous security detail even before he took office. But now all the people who used to hate him for his agenda of screwing over the environment, plus those who hate him for being a Slimy McGrifterpants, have been joined by -- pass the smelling salts -- a number of big-time Republicans and rightwing media figures. Sweet Mother of Deregulation! Could this be the end of Little Scottie? (Probably not. Trump loooooves him.)
The right-leaning calls for Pruitt to go were mostly prompted by WaPo's reporting yesterday on his attempts to use government and political connections to find a job for his wife, Marlyn Pruitt, especially since he had an EPA staffer doing all the scutwork. Fox pundit Laura Ingraham took a brief break from harassing sportsball players and teens who don't want to get shot so she could tweet out , "PRUITT BAD JUDGMENT HURTING @POTUS, GOTTA GO." (Is it weird that we're mostly impressed she can spell "judgment"?) But to prove she hadn't fallen prey to liberal fake news and liberal correct spelling, she linked not to the terrible Washington Post, but to a summary in comfortably rightish The Hill.
Ingraham wasn't the only one -- an editorial at the National Review offered the obligatory beej for what a great job Pruitt had done at ignoring climate science and making the world (if not its inhabitants) safe for coal again, saying that at first he looked like he'd be "a bright spot for the administration: a smart and tough advocate for deregulation and the rule of law." Sadly, however, his beautiful dream of untrammeled free enterprise and coal power plants from sea to oily sea has been tainted by all the scandals, and those are now in danger of risking Pruitt's true mission of letting industry do whatever it wants, so he has to go. The editorial concludes with a wistful call for the administration to please, please think of the CEOs and do the right thing:
We share most of Pruitt's views about environmental policy. But the same could be said of many other people, including Andrew Wheeler, the agency's deputy administrator, who would become acting administrator upon a vacancy in the top job. Pruitt is replaceable. And he should be replaced.
Kind of gets you right in the lungs, doesn't it? National Review is the second big conservative organ (ha!) to call for Pruitt to step down; back in May, after the news of Pruitt's expensive travel and his shady pay raises for two members of his Oklahoma Mafia, the farther-right Weekly Standard wanted him gone, too. It was pretty much the same editorial: Gosh, we love how he triggers the libs and disdains their fake science, but these scandals could detract from the great goal of raping the planet.
In addition to those rumblings by rightwing media, Pruitt seems to have finally lost the undying love of longtime friend and fellow climate denier/Oklahoman US Senator Jim Inhofe, who said yesterday in a podcast with Ingraham that he agreed Pruitt's poor judgment risked overshadowing all the good he's done for Corporate Americans.
"Let me say this," said Inhofe, "and it hurts me to say this, but I agree 100 percent with you."
Asked if Pruitt should step aside, Inhofe said, "I've seen these things. They upset me as much as they upset you and I think something needs to happen to change that."
"One of those alternatives would be for him to leave that job. I would say this, that there's a guy behind him, Andrew Wheeler, who's really qualified too. So that might be a good swap," he said, referring to EPA's deputy administrator.
Inhofe later clarified he wasn't quite saying Pruitt has to resign, or that Trump should shitcan him; rather, he was just making the observation that Scott Pruitt isn't the only guy who loves gutting environmental regulations, if you know what he means, that's all.
In an interview with Reuters later yesterday, a spokesperson for Inhofe explained that rather than calling for a resignation just yet, Inhofe would like to "hear directly from Pruitt" in a Senate hearing. Sen. Joni Ernst twote that she too was on board with having Pruitt testify, and Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, chair of the Senate environment panel that has oversight of the EPA, said he plans to actually call Pruitt to testify before the committee -- later this year. Talk about Republicans swinging into action!
In the meantime, just as long as Scott Pruitt keeps on fucking over environmental regulations, Republicans will continue to bemoan his unseemly behavior with all the vigor of their mild condemnations of Donald Trump's pussy tape.
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[ National Review / Weekly Standard / CNBC / Reuters / Photo by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons license 2.0]
Ah! But the lesson of this last round of primaries and specials has been that, in most cases, candidates who run as "more Trump than Trump" get their clocks cleaned because they don't benefit from his cult of personality.
I don't recall Obama tweeting from his personal account during his presidency.