Scratch his back and he’ll scratch theirs
As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people
He doesn’t need to hide it because he knows that nothing will ever happen to him. He has “immunity” from accountability for everything in life and always has.
The United States is producing and selling more oil right now, under Joe Biden, than any other country has in history. But that’s not good enough. We have to do everything possible to ensure that climate change is as cataclysmic as possible and Trump’s the guy who promises to do that.
The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark. Biden has called global warming an “existential threat,” and over the last three years, his administration has finalized 100 new environmental regulations aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters. In comparison, Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and his administration weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies over four years.
Not a dime’s worth of difference? How about this?
The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.
The effort stems from the industry’s skepticism that the Trump campaign will be able to focus on energy issues as Election Day draws closer — and worries that the former president is too distracted to prepare a quick reversal of the Biden administration’s green policies. Oil executives also worry that a second Trump administration won’t attract staff skillful enough to roll back President Joe Biden’s regulations or craft new ones favoring the industry, these people added.
If you want to know why the Big Money Boyz and the Bill Barrs of the Republican party still support him. Sure, he’ll destroy our democracy, but their agenda will be fulfilled. Trump’s phony populism is nothing more than a way to get the rubes to vote for them and they know it.
By the way, here’s one little irrelevant detail that stood out to me.
Yet oil giants will see an even greater windfall — helped by new offshore drilling, speedier permits and other relaxed regulations— in a second Trump administration, the former president told the executives over the dinner of chopped steak at Mar-a-Lago.
He served chopped steak? To wealthy oil men from whom he was asking a billion dollars?