This is a guest post by ClimateDenierRoundup
Despite the fact that Trump campaigned against special interests and suggested his primary opponents who begged for Koch cash were puppets, he now seems to be happy to #StaffTheSwamp with Koch operatives.
Beyond Myron Ebell and David Schnare on his environment team, news broke yesterday that Trump picked Steven Groves to lead the Department of State “landing team.” Groves is an international policy wonk at the Koch (and Exxon, and Korean gov’t) funded Heritage Foundation, and just last week, he wrote an article advocating for a pull-out of the UNFCCC as a way to exit the Paris agreement.
As the negotiating framework for the UN’s climate efforts and the underlying basis for the Paris agreement, if the US were to leave the UNFCCC, it would remove us from the negotiating table altogether.
Not only would this “lead to political consequences with our allies,” as Groves admitted in a House Science hearing last April, but it would also mean that Trump wouldn’t be able to negotiate an amazing new treaty on climate, as the US would no longer be part of the negotiating framework.
But contradictory advice is nothing new to the Heritage Foundation, which during the Farm Bill fight in 2013 told the GOP to split the bill into two parts. When Republicans did as they were told, Heritage still wasn’t happy. Republican Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina said that “Heritage was now scoring against Republicans for doing exactly what Heritage had been espousing only a month before.” Because of this stunt, as well as their push for 2013’s government shutdown, former House speaker Boehner said that groups like Heritage had “lost all credibility.”
Unfortunately, from the top of the Trump administration down, a distinct lack of credibility seems to be the unifying factor. But it is ironic that despite the Koch network’s distinct lack of effort to Trump get elected, they are nonetheless filling Trump’s administration with their operatives, from VP Pence to CIA chief Pompeo to Ebell, Schnare and Groves. And on the Energy Department front, it’s been reportedby E&E that Thomas Pyle of Koch-funded American Energy Alliance is running the transition, while the Interior is being led by Doug Domenech, of Koch-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation. And according to PoliticoPRO, on the Treasury team are Heritage-affiliated Bill Walton and Curtis Dubay.
The question is: does Trump even know the Kochs are pulling his strings? Or does he really think he’s “No puppet”?
