Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., suggested Sunday Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt should consider becoming a monk if he is so concerned about flak he faces as head of the EPA.
“The notion that I’ve got to fly first class because I don’t want people to be mean to me? You need to go into another line of work if you don’t want people to be mean to you,” Gowdy said during an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
“Like maybe a monk, where you don’t come into contact with anyone,” he continued, adding that instead of first class Pruitt should have sat at the back of airplanes as most passengers walk through first class as they board and find their seats.
.@TGowdySC on reports of Scott Pruitt’s spending: “The notion that I’ve got to fly first class because I don’t want people to be mean to me, you need to go into another line of work if you don’t want people to be mean to you. Like maybe a Monk,” pic.twitter.com/txcMxHEvtH
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) April 15, 2018
On Friday, Gowdy, as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, demanded interviews with five top aides to Pruitt for his panel’s investigation of Pruitt’s spending and ethics.
The probe is looking into Pruitt’s signing of a $50-a-night lease agreement to live in the bedroom of a luxury townhouse in Washington, D.C., owned by the wife of a energy lobbyist and the $3 million he has spent thus far on a 24/7 security detail.
The EPA has also provided Gowdy’s committee with some documents, including those showing that Pruitt spent more than $105,000 on first class travel during his first year at the agency.
“I’m not the one contemplating promoting him, or demoting him, or getting rid of him. That’s all for President Trump ” Gowdy said Sunday. “But Congress does has a responsibility to provide oversight.”
