In the 2016 primaries, Scott Pruitt did not initially support Donald Trump (he was on Team Jeb), perhaps because he saw a Trump presidency as outlandishly unlikely. But with each passing day, Pruitt is looking more and more like the Michael Cohen of the Trump cabinet, someone whose small-time sleaze is but a sad reflection of the boss’ grander and more sweeping corruption.
Indeed, one thing you can say about Pruitt is that when it comes to corruption, what he lacks in ambition he makes up for in volume. And we’ve just about reached the point where Trump is going to decide to send him on his way. In fact, I’d be surprised if Pruitt lasts until this time next week.
The latest in an absurdly long line of Pruitt scandalettes comes from the New York Times, which provides yet more detail on how Pruitt saw his taxpayer-funded staff as essentially a collection of valets there to take care of his personal business. (I won’t bother to list all the previous Pruitt controversies, because that list is so voluminous — some are here, but that was a month ago, so more have emerged since then.)
For instance, the Times reports, just after starting at the EPA, Pruitt tried to get a Republican official in Virginia to help get his daughter into law school, and three EPA staffers were tasked with helping get her a White House internship. Pruitt enlisted staffers into arranging meetings with donors and helping secure tickets to sporting events.
Man, those EPA aides are working hard! But this may be the most revealing part:
[Aides] said Mr. Pruitt told them that he expected a certain standard of living akin to wealthier Trump cabinet members. The aides felt as if Mr. Pruitt — who is paid about $180,000 a year — saw them as foot soldiers in achieving that lifestyle.
“The problem is he is not Trump — he is not a billionaire,” said one of the other aides, who spoke on the condition that they not be named. “But he sincerely thinks he is.”
That validates what Helaine Olen argued, that Pruitt is “a middle-class striver in a rich man’s administration,” surrounded by millionaires and billionaires, eager to be one of them but without the personal means to do so.
Today, Trump revealed to reporters that he’s torn about Pruitt. “I’m not happy about certain things, but he’s done a fantastic job running the EPA, which is very overriding,” the president said. But if there’s one thing that can get you booted from Trump’s employ, apart from disloyalty, it’s becoming an embarrassment. Not ethical lapses themselves, of course, but publicity that reflects poorly on Donald Trump. And Scott Pruitt has become a serious embarrassment.
As for the idea that Trump might be so happy with the job Pruitt is doing that he would keep him on despite all the coverage of Pruitt’s penny-ante corruption, don’t buy it for a moment. It’s fair to say that it doesn’t matter to the president one way or another what happens to environmental regulation, since it isn’t one of the very small number of issues, like immigration and trade, that he genuinely cares about.
That isn’t to say he’s not happy that Pruitt has turned the EPA into an agency whose primary goal is to make it as easy as possible for corporations to pollute as much as they please, but Trump no doubt knows that anyone else could do the same job. Indeed, Pruitt’s number two, who would presumably take over at least in an acting capacity if he left, is literally a coal lobbyist. Whether it’s him or some other pollution-friendly official, the next EPA administrator could continue Pruitt’s agenda without missing a beat. He’d just have to be smart enough not to try to wrangle a Chick-fil-A franchise for his wife or send an aide on a quest to procure a used Trump hotel mattress.
In fact, the only reason Pruitt hasn’t been fired yet was that Trump was too busy with other things, like the North Korea summit and angrily tweeting about Robert De Niro. But with a whole weekend of relaxation ahead of him to mull it over, don’t be surprised if Scott Pruitt’s continued employment is measured in days, if not hours.