By the time Scott Pruitt resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday afternoon, he was under more than a dozen federal investigations and beset by an unusually large number of scandals ranging from the petty to the serious and bizarre. The one completed investigation, into Pruitt's purchase of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth, found he had violated federal laws, and a new scandal was looming concerning the potentially illegal retroactive deletion of entries in his official calendar.
President Trump was reportedly getting exasperated with the unending bad headlines, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly "was seemingly obsessed with getting Pruitt ousted," The Washington Post says, and Pruitt had burned his bridges with allies inside the EPA and White House. Trump-friendly Fox News host Laura Ingraham, joining other conservative voices, tweeted Tuesday that "Pruitt is the swamp. Drain it." But Pruitt still had his defenders, including billionaire oil magnate Harold Hamm and Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel:
Prominent Republican donor Doug Deason said he was "extremely disappointed" in Trump, calling ousting Pruitt "one of the only big blunders of his administration." Trump "should have protected him better," Deason told The Washington Post. He told Politico he was specifically "so disappointed in the president's failure to support Scott against the angry attacks from the loony left," arguing that "nothing he did amounted to anything big. ... Scott Pruitt is a sacrificial lamb and I have no idea why." Dan Eberhart, another donor to Trump and the GOP from the energy industry, conceded that Pruitt made some questionable personal choices but called Pruitt "just the latest victim" of Trump's critics.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Lazarus: Harlan Coben’s ‘embarrassingly compelling’ thrillerThe Week Recommends Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin play father-and-son psychiatrists in this ‘precision-engineered’ crime drama
-
Dutch center-left rises in election as far-right fallsSpeed Read The country’s other parties have ruled against forming a coalition
-
The Rose Field: a ‘nail-biting’ end to The Book of Dust seriesThe Week Recommends Philip Pullman’s superb new novel brings the trilogy to a ‘fitting’ conclusion
-
Senate votes to kill Trump’s Brazil tariffSpeed Read Five Senate Republicans joined the Democrats in rebuking Trump’s import tax
-
Border Patrol gets scrutiny in court, gains power in ICESpeed Read Half of the new ICE directors are reportedly from DHS’s more aggressive Customs and Border Protection branch
-
Shutdown stalemate nears key pain pointsSpeed Read A federal employee union called for the Democrats to to stand down four weeks into the government standoff
-
Trump vows new tariffs on Canada over Reagan adspeed read The ad that offended the president has Ronald Reagan explaining why import taxes hurt the economy
-
NY attorney general asks public for ICE raid footageSpeed Read Rep. Dan Goldman claims ICE wrongly detained four US citizens in the Canal Street raid and held them for a whole day without charges
-
Trump’s huge ballroom to replace razed East WingSpeed Read The White House’s east wing is being torn down amid ballroom construction
-
Trump expands boat strikes to Pacific, killing 5 moreSpeed Read The US military destroyed two more alleged drug smuggling boats in international waters
-
Trump demands millions from his administrationSpeed Read The president has requested $230 million in compensation from the Justice Department for previous federal investigations
