Scott Pruitt, the “Originalist” at the E.P.A.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2018

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Attorney General of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt sued the Environmental Protection Agency fourteen times, claiming that the Obama Administration had overreached with policies intended to curtail climate change—a phenomenon which Pruitt views skeptically. Then Donald Trump appointed him to run it. The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot, who wrote about Pruitt’s first year at the E.P.A., notes that Pruitt has cast his hostility to environmental protection as a form of populist resistance, even as it has gained him close allies in the fossil-fuel industry. Pruitt calls his approach at the E.P.A. “originalism”: he’s directed the agency to focus on dirty pollution, as it did back in the nineteen-seventies. Yet, as Talbot tells David Remnick, Pruitt is still quick to overrule regulation if it inconveniences polluting industries. Plus, The New Yorker’s critic of pop music, Carrie Battan, plays three tracks that have grabbed her attention lately.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is World Trade
0:03.0	The One World Observatory
0:06.0	Is it straight of the block for West Boulevard and makes that right?
0:09.0	They didn't break that, but they have pretty good access to those people.
0:14.0	They're going to subconsciously mocked that lineage.
0:18.0	So that's happening.
0:20.0	It seems like an incredible story here on the new front.
0:24.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production
0:28.9	of WNIC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:32.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:34.8	I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining us.
0:37.3	We'll start in Washington, where the New Yorkers Margaret Talbot has spent much of the last year reporting on the EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency is run by a man who doesn't much like the way we do environmental protection, to say the very least. Scott Pruitt made his name attacking the EPA, and in his first year as EPA chief under
0:55.9	Donald Trump, he proposed repealing or delaying more than 30 environmental rules. Prueett sees the
1:02.9	job as a political launch pad. He's been talked about as a possible attorney general if Jeff Sessions
1:08.3	gets the boot, and even as a presidential candidate in
1:11.5	2024. Reporting on the agency in these circumstances is a very tricky business. EPA staff
1:18.3	are demoralized and scared, and for pretty good reason, because Scott Pruitt arranged for an
1:23.5	opposition research firm to look at some of his own employees. Staff writer Margaret Talbot
1:29.5	joins me from Washington. Margaret, let's start with this. About a year ago, EPA staff members
1:37.1	received an internal email with the subject line, Our Big Day Today. What did that refer to?
1:43.9	Well, it referred to a visit that President Trump was going
1:48.5	to be making to the EPA headquarters, basically to announce that he was undoing much of the work
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.