By Aldous J. Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team
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The next time a MAGA tries to convince you the Biden family engages in influence peddling, show them this story. Just as Donald Trump plotted to withhold congressionally approved money for Ukraine unless its president did him “a favor,” he’s now vowing to make the fossil fuel industry’s pre-apocalyptic dreams come true. All he needs in exchange is a $1 billion cash infusion to his campaign.
Assuming you’re not Rep. James Comer—who’s so into Trump, the producers of “The Human Centipede” franchise have a viable case for trademark infringement—it’s clear that the kinds of things Republicans are falsely accusing President Joe Biden of doing are the very things that Trump does all the time … and openly. And, indeed, he’s so openly corrupt, he’s barely trying to hide it anymore.
To wit, this frosty mug of what-the-fuck from The Washington Post:
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.
And in case you were wondering if Trump was simply making vague overtures toward industry leaders who follow the same train of thought he does—i.e., it would be ideal to stay out of prison until, say, 2040, when people start committing grisly crimes for the air conditioning—his offer went even further.
The Washington Post reported that according to those Mar-a-Lago attendees, Trump said the it would be a “deal” for those Big Oil executives because of all the taxes and regulations they’d be spared under another Trump presidency.
Uh-huh. In case you were wondering, this isn’t the way the government is supposed to work. It often does, unfortunately, but rarely are the nihilistic cockwombles quite this cocky.
Of course, while a Trump promise is usually worth less than the sallow flap of neck skin his prison tattoo will eventually be printed on, you can rest assured he’d keep this one. For one thing, he wants that money spigot to stay open. For another, he hates anything that might save the planet and/or muss his golden tresses. And, well, he’s not exactly a policy maven so much as a clean slate that anyone with a couple billion dollars can write on like a yard sale Etch A Sketch.
And that’s exactly what the fossil fuel industry is doing. They’re not waiting around for Trump to complete his comprehensive energy plan—which will be available approximately two weeks after his interns are done scrubbing out the puzzling Hitler references. They’re anticipating a future Trump presidency now.
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.
And you should remember this excerpt in four years when you’re squatting in an ice bucket in northern Alaska, celebrating Earth Day by watching oil refineries explode:
The Biden policies they would seek to unravel include a new fee on leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas equipment on federal land. The industry also wants to change an Environmental Protection Agency risk management rule focused on preventing refinery accidents, [Stephen] Brown [ director of energy consulting firm RBJ Strategies and a former refining industry lobbyist] said.
All this is particularly sad considering the clear benefits of Biden’s green infrastructure initiatives, which Trump would no doubt seek to roll back out of ignorance, spite, love of money, and a presumed hatred of narwhals. In fact, a little more than a week ago, the Biden administration “released rules designed to speed up permits for clean energy while requiring federal agencies to more heavily weigh damaging effects on the climate and on low-income communities before approving projects like highways and oil wells,” according to The New York Times.
Does anyone think a second Trump administration would prioritize desperately needed clean-energy projects? Trump would strip everything out of Biden’s infrastructure laws he doesn’t like and claim sole credit for the rest. It’s what Republicans do, after all.
And as we all recall, while cosplaying as president, Trump thought the best remedy for a burning planet was raking forests, pulling us out of the Paris climate agreement, and swapping humid Puerto Rico for a still-somewhat-icy Greenland. He knows he’ll die sometime in the next 20 years anyway, and unless they can put him in cryogenic freeze until science comes up with a cure for spontaneously dying on the toilet, immortality is out of reach. So what does he care?
Meanwhile, to the extent that Trump cares about policy at all, he’s proposing actions that would make post-pandemic inflation—which has bedeviled every nation on the planet—permanent. These include enacting disruptive tariffs, cutting rich people’s taxes, and deporting willing workers.
All that would hurt ordinary Americans to the benefit of plutocrats, but then, Trump is nothing if not a phony populist. As CNBC reports, Trump is currently fielding calls from wealthy donors who are keenly invested in who Trump should—and, perhaps more importantly, should not—choose as his running mate.
“I would imagine some of Trump’s trade agenda is pretty concerning for many donors,” said Marc Short, Mike Pence’s chief of staff, “and they would hope for someone there to offer a different perspective to a 10% tariff across the board.”
Other Trump donors don’t particularly care for Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance because of his support for higher tariffs and what CNBC called “aggressive business regulation.”
Well, as the old saw goes, you got to dance with them what brung you, and it’s clear Trump is dancing for dollars—when he’s not fixing to jitterbug his way out of jail.
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