Dem
51
GOP
49
CNN's Zachary Wolf has a piece right now in which he argues, persuasively and with evidence, that the single biggest policy distinction between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is their approach to the environment. Biden, of course, is generally pretty green, and the Inflation Reduction Act marks the single biggest investment in green technology in the nation's history. Trump would not only roll back as much of the Biden program as is humanly possible, he would be a bought-and-paid-for lackey of the petroleum industry, doing their bidding from his first day in office.
How can we say such a provocative thing? We are not the first to say it—that person would be one Donald J. Trump. As first reported by The Washington Post, Trump had a sit-down with key petroleum industry folks at Mar-a-Lago last month, and suggested he would really like to see them donate $1 billion to his campaign. Meanwhile, should he just so happen to be reelected, he would be highly motivated to do things like eliminate federal environmental regulations, open new federal lands to drilling, undermine the trade in electric vehicles, hand out permits for natural liquified gas exports like they are candy, and cut taxes on petroleum producers.
The roughly two dozen oil honchos at the meeting were stunned by Trump's ask ($1 billion is a lot, even for them), and by the baldly transactional nature of the whole thing. Indeed, it wasn't too hard to see this as a request for a big, fat bribe. And really, it was. However, showing his talent yet again for toeing the line without actually crossing it, experts in campaign finance law say that Trump's demand was framed in a way that it's probably legal. Essentially, he took care to set it up such that the $1 billion and all the goodies were not explicitly connected as a quid pro quo.
Thus far, the pitch hasn't had much of an effect; since the meeting, petroleum industry donations to Trump's PACs have totaled about $7 million, which is rather less than $1 billion. Undoubtedly, part of Big Oil's reticence is the possibility that Trump might not win reelection, and that their money would go to waste. Also Biden might be pretty miffed at Big Oil and govern accordingly. But if Trump wins back the White House, that goes away, and there's absolutely no doubt that Trump will deliver and the petroleum industry will pay. (Z)