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‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil
Donald Trump is promising CEOs of oil and gas conglomerates he will dismantle the climate protections President Joe Biden has installed, and he will green light their policy wishlists including gutting support for electric vehicles if they donate $1 billion for his presidential campaign, according to reporting from Politico and The Washington Post.
“You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House,” reports The Post, describing Trump’s conversation “with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month.”
“At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation,” The Post added. “Giving $1 billion would be a ‘deal,’ Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.”
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting the “U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.”
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“The effort stems from the industry’s skepticism that the Trump campaign will be able to focus on energy issues as Election Day draws closer — and worries that the former president is too distracted to prepare a quick reversal of the Biden administration’s green policies. Oil executives also worry that a second Trump administration won’t attract staff skillful enough to roll back President Joe Biden’s regulations or craft new ones favoring the industry, these people added.”
But Trump is promising Big Oil that “on Day 1” of his second term, if he wins the White House in November, they will get at least some of their wishes fulfilled.
“You’ve been waiting on a permit for five years; you’ll get it on Day 1,” Trump told the energy company executives, according to The Post. “At the dinner, Trump also promised that he would scrap Biden’s ‘mandate’ on electric vehicles — mischaracterizing ambitious rules that the Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized, according to people who attended. The rules require automakers to reduce emissions from car tailpipes, but they don’t mandate a particular technology such as EVs. Trump called them ‘ridiculous’ in the meeting with donors.”
The oil industry “got a great return on their investment during Trump’s first term, and Trump is making it crystal clear that they’re in for an even bigger payout if he’s reelected,” Alex Witt, a senior adviser for oil and gas with Climate Power, told The Post.
“With Trump, Witt said, ‘everything has a price.'”
Politico reveals how special interests, including but not limited to Big Oil, see a second Trump administration as an opportunity to literally write their own policies, in part because they don’t believe an incoming Trump administration will attract experts.
“We’re going to have to write exactly what we want, actually spoon feeding the administration. There’s 27-page drafts moving around Washington,” one energy company lawyer said. “Supportive industries are going to have to prop up a second Trump administration with expertise.”
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In an interview with Politico, Matthew Davis, vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters and a former EPA scientist, “said it’s a fairly widespread norm for outside groups to write policy proposals and white papers to inform an incoming administration’s policies. But an industry writing exact language for an incoming president to sign is ‘beyond the pale.'”
“It is not shocking, but perhaps a little bold and gross that the oil industry is writing text for executive orders,” Davis said.
Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer via social media commented, “Donald Trump is selling out Americans and our planets future to big oil. They get huge tax breaks while screwing over consumers and making record profits.”
Critics with backgrounds in government, law, the environment, and communications appeared stunned at the reporting from Politico and The Washington Post.
“Just straight up, undisguised corruption,” Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), remarked, pointing to both articles.
“Trump is putting the power of the presidency up for sale to his rich buddies,” attorney Charles DeLoach remarked.
“The Republican Party is more than just funded by the fossil fuel industry to do its bidding. Increasingly it looks like the fossil fuel industry in the US IS the Republican Party – the most shocking global example of total political capture by the industry,” commented Ed Matthew, Campaigns Director at the independent climate think tank E3G.
“Donald Trump told top oil executives to raise $1 billion for his reelection and said he would immediately reverse environmental rules issued by President Biden. That’s a perfect example of our corrupt system and why campaign finance reform is needed now,” commented Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) President Noah Bookbinder.
Political commentator and former Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor, pointing to The Post’s report, called it “one of the most overtly corrupt fundraising pitches I have ever heard and underscores the stakes in this election.”
“You won’t read a more important story today,” Philadelphia Inquirer national opinion columnist Will Bunch remarked on The Post’s report. “Trump is willing to literally destroy the planet for $1 billion.”
Strategist and communications director Josh Schwerin, who has worked for Democrats and Democratic groups, remarked: “Quid pro quo. Pay to play. Bribery. You decide the label, the result is the same. Trump is selling the White House to the highest bidders, in this case it’s oil CEOs.”
Climate Power, which calls itself a “strategic communications organization focused on winning the politics of climate,” responded to The Post’s report: “While Joe Biden has take more than 300 climate, conservation, public health, and clean energy actions, Donald Trump is selling our climate future for $1 billion. It’s not just climate champion vs. climate arsonist—it’s decency vs. evil.”
End Climate Silence’s founding director Dr. Genevieve Guenther, an expert in climate communication and fossil-fuel disinformation, remarked, “it’s nauseating on so many different levels, but I have to stay: remember the climate stakes of this election. Biden means we have a chance. Trump means full-bore fossil-fuel development and an incinerated adulthood for the kids in our homes today.”
Richard Stengel, the MSNBC political analyst, former U.S. Undersecretary of State, former TIME Magazine managing editor, and former chief executive of the National Constitution Center seemed to sum up The Post’s report on Trump: “He is the swamp.”
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Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly — and publicly — agreed to fulfill President Donald Trump’s request that she use the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate Democrats and corporations that may have had ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump on Friday declared that Epstein is the “Democrat’s problem” and not Republicans’, then called for the DOJ, FBI, and Bondi “to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”
The New York Times reported that the “inquiry appeared to be retribution for the renewed focus on his own ties to Mr. Epstein.”
Just hours later, Bondi agreed.
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“Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people,” she wrote.
The New York Times called Bondi’s acquiescence “a stark demonstration of her willingness to surrender the traditional independence of the Justice Department to serve Trump’s personal political agenda.”
The Times also reported that Bondi assigning the investigation to the Southern District of New York “could create significant conflict within an office known for its investigative might and independence.”
NBC News senior White House correspondent Garrett Haake reported that “In July, the FBI and DOJ wrote in their memo that they were not releasing the Epstein files in part because ‘We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.’ – and now, after a push from the President, here we are.”
Legal experts and other critics denounced the moves.
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“Count the ways they’re corrupting DOJ,” wrote former longtime U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now an MSNBC legal analyst and professor of law. “Presidents don’t direct AG’s to open criminal cases, especially ones designating only Dems for investigation when POTUS himself is involved. DOJ doesn’t publicize criminal investigations & the AG definitely doesn’t assign them on Twitter.”
MSNBC executive producer Kyle Griffin asked, “If this investigation was legitimate, why wasn’t this investigation opened months ago? If this investigation was legitimate, why isn’t everyone mentioned in Epstein’s emails being investigated?”
Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon added, “When the president gives orders to Pam Bondi and our law enforcement arms of the federal government, it undercuts the credibility of our law enforcement.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for him to do it. I would ask him not to do that, because all it does is taint our legal system,” Bacon concluded.
Responding to Bondi’s remarks, civil liberties and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote: “Unabashed corruption.”
“This has absolutely nothing to do with crime,” she stated. “Pam Bondi is just debasing her entire department for her liege so that she can stave off Congress from releasing whatever damning information she has on Trump. It’s a cover-up pure and simple and merely an indication of Trump’s desperation.”
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Image via Reuters
One of Capitol Hill’s most prominent — and most vocal — Democrats is warning about what he says are the ways President Donald Trump could try to remain in power beyond his current term.
President Trump has long hinted that he is interested in a third term, and even has had red “Trump 2028” caps as part of his merchandise offering. And while he recently appeared to put to rest questions about a third term — prohibited under a plain reading of the U.S. Constitution — by saying he has been told he cannot run, doubts among some still linger.
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) on Friday shared what he suggested were possible ways Trump could try to stay in power past 2028 — and warned he thinks it’s possible that he will.
“I think he is right now trying to scheme a way to be able to stay,” Senator Murphy told The Bulwark’s Sam Stein at the 2025 Texas Tribune Festival.
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“I think you have a potential, two potential Supreme Court vacancies coming up,” Murphy noted, “and it may be very important for him to install folks on the Supreme Court who may be willing to entertain radical ideas about the restrictions on the Constitution, about a third term.”
Murphy continued with an alternative theory, suggesting the President Trump “may just be interested in installing Donald Trump Jr. or another family member in the White House.”
But then the Connecticut Democrat served up a warning.
“Whatever he’s planning on doing, he can’t get away with it unless he destroys the ability of the people to speak their mind in elections because he and his party are going to lose in 2026 and 2028 unless he’s successful in rigging the election,” Murphy declared.
He vowed, “we’re going to do everything in our power, and we need to order all of our advocacy in the United States Senate and the House to stop him from doing it.”
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Murphy continued with his warnings.
“I don’t think anybody with ambition right now should be planning on running for president in 2028 because we may not have a free and fair election in 2028,” Murphy declared. “We all have to be in the business of saving our democracy right now.”
“I do think we have to, all of us,” he added, “be traveling the entire country, whether it be an early primary state or not, to build this political resistance movement.”
Q: Is your anticipation that Trump is going to try to remain in the White House after 2028?
CHRIS MURPHY: Sure. I think right now he is trying to scheme a way to stay. pic.twitter.com/mw4Zco38Cv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 14, 2025
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President Donald Trump is intensifying his efforts to thwart attempts to force the release of the Epstein files, even as the House moves toward a vote that could send disclosure legislation to his desk for his signature — or veto — further heightening scrutiny of his past ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On Friday, the president announced he will ask the U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation “to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”
The New York Times reported that the “inquiry appeared to be retribution for the renewed focus on his own ties to Mr. Epstein.”
After White House officials reportedly held a Situation Room meeting with Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert on Wednesday to convince her — unsuccessfully — to remove her name from the discharge petition, the president on Friday took a different tack, appearing both to try to wash his hands of the entire ordeal while refocusing attention on his political opponents and others.
“Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!” Trump railed on his Truth Social website, while attacking Democrats.
“The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do,” Trump alleged.
“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” the president continued. “Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!”
“Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”
Deadline on Friday noted that “Since the email release, Trump has avoided answering reporters’ questions about Epstein.”
Pointing to Trump’s Friday remarks, Politico’s Kyle Cheney remarked, “Trump again pleads with Republicans to stop talking about Epstein. The pressure hasn’t worked as well as it usually does. Also, the emails show Epstein was politically amorphous, deriding Ds just as much as Rs. And these latest emails were from the Epstein estate, not DOJ.”
Attorney Aaron Parnas added, “I guarantee you if Donald Trump truly believed Epstein was the ‘Democrat’s problem,’ he would have released all of the files by now.”
DOJ Blasted for Taking Epstein Investigation Orders From Trump
Democrat Warns How Trump Could Engineer a Path to Stay in Power After 2028
‘Retribution’: Trump Calls for Epstein Inquiry Into Democrats
‘Mask Comes Off’: Trump Branded an ‘Elitist’ as Base Scrutinizes ‘America First’ Focus
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