Scott Pruitt, the Trump cabinet member in charge of environment who had pushed the President to exit the India-backed Paris climate accord, resigned on Thursday amid unrelenting scrutiny over ethics and spending.<\/p>\n
Pruitt, administrator of the Environment Protection Agency , was asked to step down by the White House in the light of news reports of alleged excesses including first-class travel by him and his family at the state\u2019s expense, installing a soundproof phone booth worth $49,000 in his office, and hunting for a lucrative job for his wife. Besides this, he was also said to have sent staffers on personal errands such as shopping for his favourite moisturising lotion and acquiring used mattresses from the Trump International hotel.<\/p>\n
Pruitt a fervent climate-change sceptic was instrumental in rolling back the Obama-era environmental regulations which, according to the Republican Party and the president, were stifling American manufacturing and industries such as coal mining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin the agency, Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this,\u201d Trump wrote on Twitter, announcing his acceptance of Pruitt\u2019s resignation. Reports say that he, however, did not speak to the EPA administrator regarding his decision.<\/p>\n
Scott had built his career and reputation as an Oklahoma state attorney general by suing the very department he would come to head years later. And at the EPA, he delivered on President Trump\u2019s election promise of rolling back former premier Barack Obama\u2019s aggressive measures on environment, including coal mining, fuel efficiency and emission regulations.<\/p>\n
But among them, Pruitt was proudest about the role he played in the Trump administration\u2019s decision to exit the Paris climate accord a legacy agreement forged by Obama after prolonged negotiations with other top polluters such as China and India.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president showed tremendous fortitude, tremendous courage to stand in the Rose Garden in June and say: \u2018You know what? I\u2019m going to put America first\u2019,\u201d Pruitt said at a conference of conservatives shortly after.<\/p>\n
It was a momentous occasion for him, indeed. He had managed to persuade the president to leave the accord, overriding opposition from Trump\u2019s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner both of whom are also close advisors to the president. He had practically over-ridden the First Family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scott Pruitt, the Trump cabinet member in charge of environment who had pushed the President to exit the India-backed Paris climate accord, resigned on Thursday amid unrelenting scrutiny over ethics and spending. Pruitt, administrator of the Environment Protection Agency , was asked to step down by the White House in the light of news reports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36388,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36386\/revisions\/36388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}