President Trump’s former environmental transition head is blaming Environment Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, and a lack of key political appointees, for slow progress in reining in the government’s climate ambitions.
Myron Ebell, who was chosen by the Trump campaign to lead the EPA transition team, told the conservative Jefferson Institute in Virginia a month ago that the lack of progress represents “an impending disaster for the Trump administration,” according to a recording of the closed session obtained by Reuters and reported Monday.
Ebell was thought to be the choice to lead the agency before Pruitt was nominated for the job. He is now back at the Washington-based free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank, where he leads the group’s environmental and energy center.
Ebell called Pruitt an “imperfect choice” to lead the EPA and a big reason why President Trump is not acting more aggressively on rolling back climate change regulations.
He later walked back some of the recorded comments in a statement to Reuters, saying Pruitt is “an excellent choice to head the EPA, and minor disagreements aside, his recent actions have made me even more confident that he will be an outstanding administrator.”
Ebell also blamed the slow pace of EPA political appointments as a key problem for advancing Trump’s agenda more swiftly. He noted that Pruitt has no deputy administrator and other key assistant administrators had not been named.
In addition, the White House has an overall lack of experience, including deep ideological divisions among Trump’s top advisers, he said.
He warned that the “new president doesn’t have long before inertia sets in” and momentum is lost. He noted that Trump’s advisers should have allowed his transition team to roll out the agenda before Trump took office on Jan. 20 and Pruitt was installed.
“He’s got people on different sides and they are all fighting over who gets these jobs and nobody has the clout except the president to say, ‘Hey fix this, let’s get this done,'” Ebell said in the recording.
