Scott Pruitt, the embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency, probably thought he was going to get a friendly platform to rehab his image when he sat down with Fox News correspondent Ed Henry. But the relentlessly challenging questions from Henry – followed by critical comments afterward to Fox host Martha MacCallum - strongly suggests Pruitt is not long for the Trump administration. UPDATED
Watch Henry pepper Pruitt with challenges to his story about pay raises for his cronies and his infamous $50/day condo (Pruitt told Henry it was just one room) in Washington, owned by the wife of a lobbyist, that Pruitt only had to pay on the nights he stayed there. Even though, according to Think Progress, it was not available to any other tenants during that period.
Believe me, Henry doesn’t just conduct a tough interview with a top Trump administration official out of any journalistic principles. His contentious approach was almost surely approved, and probably directed, by a higher up.
Yes, it could be a sudden effort by Fox’s news division to prove it’s not so in the tank for Trump after some embarrassing criticism from the likes of former analyst Ralph Peters and current anchor Shepard Smith. But there was one question from Henry that was obviously designed as the kill shot for Pruitt: It happened at about 5:50 in the interview. As Pruitt was talking about his “transformational” work at the EPA, Henry suddenly decided to highlight, apropos of nothing being discussed, Pruitt’s 2016 criticism of Trump.
PRUITT: Look, [the EPA has] been a place for years that has been used by the left, the environmental left, to advance an agenda of picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
HENRY: Sure. But you’ve said some pretty tough stuff. You said about the president, quote – and this is in 2016 – I think he’s an empty vessel when it comes to the Constitution and the rule of law. You said that about Donald Trump.
If I were Pruitt, I’d start packing up my office.
Watch Henry hammer Pruitt below, during the April 4, 2018 The Story with Martha MacCallum.
4/6/18 update: The plot thickens as it appears that there is a White House faction that wants Pruitt gone, but Trump resists.
When both these previously middle-of-the roadish gentlemen (by Fox standards) were allowed back on air, they were transformed characters. Each now spouts a constant stream of extreme Fox-dictated ‘opinion’, obviously a strict condition of their renewed employment.
I hate you, Fox ‘News’.
