Rick Wilson: Scott Pruitt Wasn't Corrupt Enough for Trumpistan

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/scott-pruitt-wasnt-corrupt-enough-for-trumpistan?ref=home

Scott Pruitt Wasn’t Corrupt Enough for Trumpistan
If you’re going to act like a local warlord, you’ve got to go big. Petty corruption is harder to excuse than bold piratical plundering.
Rick Wilson
07.05.18 11:58 PM ET


The Scott Pruitt fiasco could only have ended one way: not with a bang but a simper, a wet fart of a resignation that exposed three Big Lies of the Trump world.

First, the image of Trump and his squad as hard-bargaining, brutal street fighters who never give in and always punch back twice as hard sure didn’t hold up. Pruitt isn’t even under FBI investigation, which is more than many of President Trump’s compatriots can say.

Second, it exposed the lie that Republicans in Congress are anything more than Trump’s enablers. The vast majority of Republicans in Washington know this administration is lavishly corrupt. They’re not stupid; it’s driven home every time they walk through the doors of Trump’s hotel or watch Jared Kushner trawling foreign satraps for cash like some 4 a.m. lot lizard at a truck stop.

Pruitt represented a perfect opportunity for these Vichy Republicans to buy some daylight from both the grand and petite corruptions of the Trump administration that fill D.C. to the scuppers. In a sinking ship of state awash with “Yeah, but…” rationalizations, excuses, and muttered denials, Pruitt’s lavish, third world kleptocratic behavior gave them every chance to do the right thing, so of course, by and large, they didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

As with all things Trump, there’s always an excuse, no matter how thin. In conversations with elected officials and activists in the past few weeks, there was a gushing approval for what Pruitt was doing on the policy front, and feigned ignorance of everything else. That Pruitt was a man of such petty, grubby behaviors wasn’t a deep, dark secret. Many Republicans now have egg on their faces for sitting quietly and waiting for Trump to do the right thing.

Finally, as if America needed reminding, Trump’s promises to hire the best people to drain the swamp and Make America Great Again are all not only false but ludicrously so.

Like Trump, the Doctor Evil of presidents, finally found his EPA chief’s behavior had reached a point of rapidly diminishing returns. Lights and sirens? Ritz-Carlton hand lotion? Custom pens? Running government staffers as if they were the servant of some particularly self-indulgent generalissimo? Chick-fil-A franchises?

What, precisely, did you expect? Donald Trump is unequivocal proof that As hire Bs and Bs hire Cs, and Trump hires people without the judgment, qualifications, ethical foundations, and moral stature to run an underground bum-fighting operation. Scott Pruitt’s obvious money problems should have screamed out in any background check, to say nothing of a Senate confirmation hearing.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/scott-pruitt-wasnt-corrupt-enough-for-trumpistan?ref=home