Wait so you can call Trump on his personal phone and he’ll pick up? That’s insane.
Hey, one of every three calls is some crazy rich asshole wanting to give him money or a piece of whatever scheme they got. Ching ching!
Kamala would have done the same, obvs. But, at least by not voting we stopped a genocide, man.
All the people who didn’t vote for her to stop a genocide would be very upset with you if they could read.
Harris probably would have started a war with Iran.
Even after all this, you pick the whataboutism. Incredible.
Apparently:
I really thought that was a parody when I read the headline.
Now I just wish it were.
By calling the president, I was hoping for some color on his relationship with Hildebrand. He had, after all, named Hildebrand’s wife ambassador to Costa Rica. My reporting so far had also revealed that the administration was gathering advice from oil industry groups backed by Hildebrand, and that it planned to weaken environmental regulations on stripper wells — potentially making Hildebrand even richer.
“I hear he does a good job,” Trump replied. “Don’t know him very well. OK?”
At first I thought the exchange undermined my story, making Hildebrand seem less central to the president’s energy policies than I’d suspected. But I realized that Trump’s comments illustrated something important about how this administration works. Trump appeared to have little clue about Hildebrand’s business, but when I mentioned that it was threatened by the “Biden methane rules,” the president was quick to respond, “Certainly we do the opposite of what Biden did.”
Trump, in other words, may be only vaguely aware of the people and groups helping to rewrite all manner of consequential policies. But what matters in Washington right now are not so much technical policy details but support for the president and an affinity with the broader ideological project: Deregulate everything.
. . . With Hildebrand, I felt I had found a compelling character who is also the poster boy for a hugely consequential issue: Stripper wells collectively contribute just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas, but scientists have found they’re responsible for roughly half the sector’s methane pollution. That means they play an outsize role in climate change, which is amplifying heat waves, droughts and wildfires.
My previous reporting has shown that a former lobbyist for Hildebrand’s company — who now has a top post at the Environmental Protection Agency — has been rewriting methane regulations with advice from the oil industry. (An EPA spokesperson said the official “fulfilled all his ethical obligations to the letter.”)
