This morning, Scott Pruitt got a call from the boss.
President Trump reportedly phoned Pruitt, the EPA chief, to encourage him, who has weathered increasingly negative news about his townhouse lease from a registered lobbyist and his decision to work around the White House to secure pay raises for two of his staffers.
When put in context, those encouraging words might actually be damning.
Just ask the former Veterans Affairs secretary. David Shulkin spoke with Trump over the phone multiple times before getting sacked. As Maggie Haberman of the New York Times points out, the calls were cordial and even breezy. Those chats didn’t help him in the end, though. Now, a similar situation could be playing out with Trump.
To be sure, the president has to be happy with how Pruitt is handling the agency. On Monday, the EPA revoked Obama-era standards that would have forced automakers to manufacture cars and trucks capable of getting 50 miles per gallon by 2025. That’s a boon to the industry, and it’s possible that Trump doesn’t want any personnel drama to overshadow that public victory.
At the same time, while Trump governs by the 24-hours news-cycle, he has a remarkably long memory. As Politico’s Eliana Johnson notes, there’s no way the president has forgotten about that time Pruitt said Trump would be “more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama.”
Granted, Pruitt made those remarks while serving as a policy adviser for Jeb Bush during the campaign, and also granted Pruitt has worked to prove himself wrong since joining the administration. Back in January, I wrote that Trump clearly valued Pruitt’s current contributions more than Trump took offense to Pruitt’s past criticism.
But as the negative press keeps rolling in, this president might change his mind as he has done so many times before. A brief phone call from the president shouldn’t be reassuring.
