Bombshell reports from The Washington Post and Politico are fueling concerns over the promises 2024 Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly has been making to “Big Oil.”

“What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign,” is The Washington Post’s headline.

“Donald Trump has pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, as well as other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry,” The Post reported.

“You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. 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.”

“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,” The Post added.

“Political contributing is often a type of legalized bribery,” The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo remarked. “But the way Trump is so explicit about making a ‘deal’ is going to raise eyebrows.”

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It has.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, an attorney and University of California, Berkeley professor of public policy issued this warning:

“Trump asked Big Oil execs to give him $1 billion for his campaign. He promised lower taxes and a rollback of Biden’s climate regulations and clean energy programs in return. Trump is literally willing to take bribes in exchange for the destruction of the planet. Be warned,” Reich wrote.

U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo (D-RI) also issued a warning: “Donald Trump is saying the quiet part out loud. Re-electing him will guarantee ‘deals’ that work against our climate future. He cares more about campaign donations from oil tycoons than the fate of future generations and the health of our planet. Take him at his word.”

“We cannot believe this,” wrote government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). “Donald Trump essentially told a room full of oil executives ‘raise a billion dollars for me and I’ll get rid of the regulations that you want.’ This is blatantly corrupt behavior.”

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Former LA Times reporter Steve Weinstein called it, “Bribery straight up.”

“Wow,” exclaimed U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) “a report today finds donald trump demanded a straight up billion dollar bribe from oil executives. Republicans want to sell you out to big oil to line their pockets.”

Liberal Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century wrote: “New reporting uncovered Trump is already planning to sell the White House to the highest bidder. He’s demanding a $1 billion bribe from oil execs in exchange for massive tax cuts and the repeal of environmental protections and clean energy investments.”

Josh Dorner, a communications executive, responded to the Washington Post’s Heather Long’s summation of the paper’s report, by writing: “Bribery, how does it work?”

Bribery, how does it work? https://t.co/WKvb4wbKSr

— Josh Dorner (@JoshDorner) May 9, 2024

Marketing executive Jason Karsh, also responding to Long’s post, wrote: “How cool is it to have a presidential candidate so broke and so corrupt that he’s asking for bribes out in the open. I mean, he’s a Republican so nothing will happen, but this is so clearly what the founders intended, it’s just … *wipes a tear*”

California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom commented, “Big Oil is literally writing up Executive Orders for Trump to sign on Day 1 — with the promise of $1 billion in return. He’s giving away our planet in return for cash. Have we just accepted this as the new norm??”

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett in a lengthy social media thread reached back into history and compared Trump’s alleged billion-dollar request to the Teapot Dome scandal. “Until now, it was the biggest presidential corruption case in US history,” she wrote.

Trump’s deal to Big Oil [give my campaign $1B & all #Biden climate & green policies will be void] echoes the Teapot Dome Scandal in another #Republican #POTUS race 100 yrs ago. Until now, it was the biggest presidential corruption case in US history.
MOREhttps://t.co/B8glCJmeDM

— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) May 9, 2024

“The Teapot Dome Scandal was, in the 1920s, the greatest threat to the integrity of the US Presidency the Nation had experienced. Not only was Big Oil bribery unfolding, but Harding, a golfer and womanizer, & had a child out of wedlock,” she noted in one post.

See the social media posts above or at this link.

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Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, less than 24 hours after Democrats saved his job in a “motion to vacate” vote, vowed to “round up” and likely deport all of the estimated 11 million undocumented or unauthorized people living or working in the United States of America.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday told Johnson, “the President of the United States, the former president who wants to be the next president, said one of his plans in a talk to Time Magazine is to round up the 11 to 15 million illegals, and then go through them and find out who belongs here and who doesn’t. Would you support that?”

“Absolutely,” Johnson, a Christian nationalist, immediately replied. “And President Trump and I’ve talked about this at length, but the challenge we’ll have is finding them. Brian, as you know, they’ve been spread out everywhere, the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, and [Secretary] Mayorkas, the reason we impeached him is because he’s an abject failure and they’re not keeping track of where these people are. So we will have the greatest challenge of our generation to try to find them to round them up first, and that’s a very serious problem.”

Johnson’s promise to “round up” undocumented immigrants also comes less than 24 hours after he appeared on the steps of the Capitol to promote legislation making it illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote, despite there being a federal law on the books that already does so.

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“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that’s easily provable. We don’t have that number,” Johnson falsely told reporters.

Last month, in a joint press conference with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Johnson told reporters Democrats are trying to turn undocumented immigrants into voters.

“We only want U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections, but there are some Democrats who don’t want to do that. We believe that one of their designs, one of the reasons for this open border, which everybody asked all around the country, why would they do this? Why would they allow all this chaos? Why the violence? Because they want to turn these people into voters.”

Undocumented immigrants cannot legally vote in federal elections, and studies show the number who do is extremely small.

Meanwhile, the negative impacts on the U.S. economy should Trump deport the nation’s undocumented population would be devastating.

According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, “Roughly Half of Hired Crop Farmworkers Lack Legal Immigration Status.”

The Center for Migration Studies in March examined the effects of mass deportation, versus giving the undocumented legal status.

“The undocumented population comprises 5 percent of the workforce in the United States, working in industries such as agriculture, construction, service, entertainment, and health-care. On a micro level, they help manicure our lawns, take care of our children and grandchildren, clean our homes, wait on us at restaurants, and collect our trash. Without their labor, the US economy would experience a labor shortage which could not be replenished easily, and the costs of goods and services would rise,” CMS reported.

“In addition, the United States is facing a severe workforce shortage, with workers needed in a variety of industries. Mass deportations would only exacerbate these shortages. Moreover, cumulative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would be reduced by 2.6 percent, or nearly $5 trillion over ten years if the 8.1 million undocumented workers were deported. If the undocumented population was legalized, however, the GDP would rise by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. Finally, the nation’s housing market would be jeopardized because a high percentage of the 1.3 million mortgages held by households with undocumented immigrants would be in peril.”

Watch Johnson’s remarks below or at this link.

KILMEADE: Trump said he wants to round up 11 million illegals. Do you support that?

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Absolutely pic.twitter.com/IXOqEKjsLo

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 9, 2024

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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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