Watching Angry Senators Drag Scott Pruitt Is a Deeply Satisfying Experience
We have arrived at a peculiar inflection point in American history, one at which shocking details of alleged president-adjacent criminality are coming at such breakneck speed that, in a desperate attempt to cope with the existence of high-level corruption on a near-unimaginable scale, Americans retreated this week to the safest place they know: arguing with one another about a viral video on the Internet.
Ambiguous audio phenomena are not the only moments of joy that can unite us during such trying times, however. Squarely in the middle of this maelstrom of wrongdoing is EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, a rosy-cheeked charlatan who looks like an underripe Rudy Giuliani and talks like someone whose handlers remind him to "be folksy, people like that" at the beginning of every speech. Pruitt testified before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, which presented lawmakers with the rare opportunity to rake him over his beloved coals. They did not pass it up.
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The most diligent line of questioning came from New Mexico's Tom Udall, who opened by recapping Pruitt's myriad scandals before walking the former Oklahoma attorney general through the constituent elements of one of his violations of federal law—his failure to pay an aide who house-hunted for Pruitt and his family during work hours. "Your tenure at the EPA is a betrayal of the American people," he said as Pruitt sat there and wondered if there is an emergency trap door under the designated witness's seat, and if so, how he might be able to activate it. "You have used your office to enrich yourself at the expense of the American taxpayer and public health."
Vermont senator and beloved Batman superfan Patrick Leahy delivered the day's most withering line, though, while discussing Pruitt's insistence that he travel first class on taxpayers' dime due to "unprecedented" safety concerns—a series of bone-chilling incidents that includes a fellow passenger saying mean things to him on an airplane, and a merry prankster taping to an EPA elevator door a picture of Scott Pruitt's face adorned with a hand-drawn mustache. Leahy related a recent conversation he had with "a Vermonter," who is definitely a real person and not a vehicle for Leahy's own thoughts that he created for the express purpose of spiking a man's soul into the core of the earth while maintaining some degree of senatorial decorum.
"A Vermonter said, ‘What a silly reason you had to fly first class,’ because of a danger to you, unless you flew first class. He said, ‘Nobody even knows who you are, and you go in there, oh, somebody might criticize you?’ You've got security people that we’ve never seen before, but you have to fly first class? Oh, come on."
Patrick Leahy is wrong in the sense that people do know Scott Pruitt's name now, thanks to all the ways in which he managed to abuse his power in the span of 15 short months. Patrick Leahy is right, though, in that Scott Pruitt is utterly indistinguishable from any frumpy sales manager stuffed into a middle seat on his way to a conference in Topeka, and that in the anonymous, mind-your-business, let's-get-this-over-with world of air travel, only a coach-class seatmate with the keenest sense of proximity to grift would ever be able to detect his spiritually tiny presence among them.
Alas, only President Trump can fire Scott Pruitt, which means that all the sick burns in the world are powerless to stop his diligent efforts to facilitate the destruction of the environment he is charged with protecting. But it still feels good to watch.
