Scott Pruitt is a Coward
Scott Pruitt is Donald Trump’s Administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. And he’s the worst embodiment of “environmental protection” we’ve ever seen.
Yet despite an Administration hell-bent on dismantling our government, and Pruitt’s strong support from the fossil fuel industry, a rising question is this: why is Scott Pruitt so afraid?
Scott Pruitt has spent his professional life fighting EPA and common sense safeguards about climate change and water pollution and human health protection.
As the Oklahoma Attorney General, he has worked openly and aggressively to install the corporate agenda of the most powerful mining, oil and gas corporations (he was even caught cutting and pasting a letter from oil corporations onto his official Oklahoma Attorney General letterhead to press these corporate interests).
In addition to his unprecedented assault on our nation’s air, water and families, Pruitt’s short tenure has been remarkable in a couple other respects. First, he’s surrounded himself with an unprecedented security detail. Day and night, Pruitt insists on spending our public dollars — estimated at up to $2 million a year — to protect him from something only he can explain. No other EPA Administrator has spent a fraction of our tax dollars to protect someone who’s not even a Cabinent official. And no other EPA Administrator has demanded round-the-clock protection.
Then, there’s Pruitt’s recent push to spend even more tax dollars on a sophisticated phone privacy system. He’s spent at least $25,000 in tax dollars to ensure he operates in a cone of silence, where no one can hear or record his conversations. And his paranoid efforts at secrecy do not end there — Pruitt reportedly prohibits his own staff from bringing note pads and smart phones into meetings in his high-security office.
As expected, Pruitt gets a lot of money and support from the Koch Brothers and other fossil fuelcorporations (which of course puts him in the same league as Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, who has repeatedly supported efforts to weaken salmon habitat protection). But with such wealthy and powerful friends, why is Pruitt so scared?
The most basic answer is because he knows what he’s doing is wrong, and that strong majorities of Americans support clean water and clean air. If Scott Pruitt had the courage of his convictions, he wouldn’t be afraid to do what he believes. In the end, Pruitt is nothing more than a coward.
