Towards the end of his 2016 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump discovered a new slogan: “Drain the swamp!” He admitted being surprised at how well it went down with crowds at his rallies and kept repeating it.
But once he reached the White House and formed his cabinet there was, critics said, no greater “swamp creature” than Scott Pruitt. In a new era dominated by Trump’s norm-busting words and actions, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) behaved like a corrupt politician from the old school.
“Pruitt is the swamp,” Laura Ingraham, a host on Fox News, which Trump is known to watch avidly, tweeted on Tuesday. “Drain it.”
From this point of view, Pruitt acted with impunity reminiscent of a kleptocratic ruler of a small republic – a republic called the EPA, which is supposed to be safeguarding clean air and water for the United States. He enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, often at taxpayers’ expense, flew first class, used flashing lights and sirens on his motorcade to beat traffic and tried to use state resources to benefit his family.
The former Oklahoma attorney general faced countless ethical questions about his travel spending, security costs, dealings with industry lobbyists and misuse of government resources. Eyebrows were raised when it emerged that the EPA had installed a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in Pruitt’s office. According to Politico, biometric locks were installed on his office doors for $5,700.
Pruitt rented a bedroom near Capitol Hill from a veteran fossil fuel lobbyist for $50 a night and later told the Washington Examiner: “I’m dumbfounded that that’s controversial.” He spent more than $105,000 on first-class flights because of “threats to his safety”, according to Politico, and $3m of taxpayer funds on a 24-hour security detail three times bigger than that used by his predecessor.
Pruitt ordered EPA staff to carry out personal chores for him, picking up dry cleaning and trying to obtain a used Trump hotel mattress for his apartment. He even told them to contact conservative groups and companies to find a lucrative job for his unemployed wife, including as a Chick-fil-A franchisee. His staff spent more than $1,500 on fountain pens and over $1,600 on journals, CNN reported.
Pruitt denied any knowledge of huge pay raises awarded to two close aides he had brought with him to the EPA from Oklahoma, but documents later showed Pruitt’s chief of staff had signed off on them. In addition, a former lobbyist helped the EPA set up a trip to Morocco which cost $100,000, more than double the original cost estimate. Pruitt accepted seats from a billionaire coal executive for himself and his son at a university basketball game.
Yet as the administration ran through a litany of dismissals and resignations – including Tom Bossert, David Shulkin, HR McMaster, Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, Hope Hicks, Rob Porter, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Dina Powell, Tom Price, Steve Bannon, Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, James Comey and Michael Flynn – Pruitt appeared to be bulletproof.
Trump repeatedly praised his efforts to reduce regulations that the administration says hurt business growth. Pruitt, in turn, was unswervingly loyal and echoed his boss’s scepticism about climate change and disdain for the Paris agreement. He denied wrongdoing in the face of multiple congressional and oversight inquiries.
However, Trump, more than most presidents, will have been keenly aware of the slew of negative TV coverage in general and the Fox News backlash in particular. In April, after Oval Office remarks in which he lauded the EPA’s work, he reportedly turned to Pruitt and said: “Knock it off.”
On Thursday came the resignation. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he headed to a rally in Montana, Trump insisted that Pruitt had done “an outstanding job inside of the EPA” and there was “no final straw”, adding: “It was very much up to him.”
The biggest surprise was not that Pruitt had gone, but that it had not happened earlier. Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Senate environment and public works committee, said: “That this took so long shows how high the Trump administration’s tolerance is for corruption and sleaze. The sad part is that it was the cascade of little sleazy acts that brought Pruitt down, not his overarching corruption by fossil fuel interests.”
Trump and Pruitt were, in many ways, a good match. If, according to Laura Ingraham, Pruitt is the swamp, now he has gone. But few believe the swamp has gone with him.
