Some past criticisms of Donald Trump come back to haunt Scott Pruitt.
This is awkward.
When President Donald Trump brags about all the regulations his administration has cut, he has Scott Pruitt to partially thank. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator has spent the past year laying waste to regulatory rules the EPA was once charged with enforcing. This has made him one of Trump’s favorite lieutenants.
So it was a little embarrassing for Pruitt when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R. I.) spent part of Tuesday’s hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee reminding the EPA chief of a two-year-old interview in which he said Trump would be even more lawless than former President Barack Obama.
Pruitt gave the interview to radio host Pat Campbell in his home state of Oklahoma. This was back in February 2016, just when the presidential primaries were kicking off and GOP leaders were searching for modes of attack to stop Trump:
“I believe that Donald Trump in the White House would be more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama — and that’s saying a lot. […] I really believe he would use a blunt instrument. This president at least tries to nuance his unlawfulness. Donald Trump has said many, many times they want… I’ll do this I’ll do that. And those things that he’s mentioned cannot be done. I think executive orders with Donald Trump would be a very blunt instrument with respect to the Constitution.”
This statement is predicated on the settled idea on the right that Obama was a uniquely unlawful president. In that context, “at least tries to nuance his unlawfulness” might be one of the nicest things Republicans ever said about him.
As for Trump, Pruitt obviously made these comments before he knew the president would give him the opportunity to accomplish his career goal of destroying the EPA… er, I mean, of reversing some of the regulations like the Clean Power Plan that were among Obama’s allegedly unlawful sins.
After the hearing, Pruitt’s staff tried to do damage control by releasing a statement that read, in part: “Now having the honor of working for him, it is abundantly clear that President Trump is the most consequential leader of our time. No one has done more to advance the rule of law than President Trump.”
How Pruitt squares this statement with his rolling back of regulations in secret, with notably less public transparency than Obama’s administration practiced, remains unaddressed.
Watch video of the exchange between Pruitt and Whitehouse below.
