Governor Rick Scott Wants to Run for the US Senate, Trump Administration Has Just Helped and Pre-Endorsed Him
Last week the Trump administration announced it was rescinding President Barack Obama’s ban on oil and gas drilling of U.S. coastal waters. The administration, The New York Times reported, would be “giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard.”
The move would “deal a serious blow” to President Obama’s “environmental legacy. It would also signal that the Trump administration is not done unraveling environmental restrictions in an effort to promote energy production.”
But on Tuesday night Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke (photo) issued a statement saying he was now exempting the waters off Florida because that state is “unique.” Zinke went on to say he personally has worked with Florida Governor Rick Scott and has “witnessed Governor Scott’s leadership,” as if that is a justification for exempting Florida from the Trump administration’s reckless decision to grossly allow expansion of oil and gas drilling.Â
Zinke, who “hastily” held a press conference after meeting with Gov. Scott, went on to endorse Gov. Scott – who is widely rumored to be considering a run for the U.S. Senate – calling him “a straightforward leader that can be trusted.”
“I support the governor’s position that Florida is unique and its coasts are heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” the Interior Secretary announced.
Are the governors of Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Oregon, California, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii not straightforward leaders that can be trusted? Are those states not also unique? Is tourism not an important economic driver form them?
Or are they subject to potentially hazardous oil and gas drilling off their shores because the Secretary of the Interior hasn’t personally worked with them?
Or could it be that they don’t have Republican governors that the Trump administration wants to install in the U.S. Senate?
“Late Tuesday,” the Orlando Sentinel reports, Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson “blasted the announcement as a ‘political stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration to help Rick Scott.'”
“Suddenly Secretary Zinke announces plans to drill off Florida’s coast and four days later agrees to ‘take Florida off the table?’ I don’t believe it,†Nelson said in a released statement.
Stunningly, too, Zinke in a news conference Tuesday night, after meeting with Governor Scott, said America fights wars overseas for oil.
“I don’t want your kids ever to fight on foreign shores for a resource we have here,†he told reporters.
The decision making in the Trump administration has nothing to do with facts or science. It has everything to do with politics and power.
This is just another example of the corruption that extends high up in the Trump administration.
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Image by U.S. Department of Energy via Flickr
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