Smokestacks

Strange but true…but then again since this is the Trump White House… let’s make it stranger than truth.

President Trump is going to tout his environmental credentials during his run for re-election. Say, what?

Bloomberg reported April 8 that Team Trump “is developing talking points on climate change and cultivating a list of environmental “success stories” from clean air to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

And the point man in the campaign: Andrew Wheeler, former coal lobbyist who succeeded the disgraced Scott Pruitt Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Trump may be the most toxic president when it comes to environmental protection.

Any recent US progress on environmental protection flows from the regulations and safeguards that were put into place by president Barack Obama.

And since his January 2017 inauguration, Trump has been hellbent on rolling back anything remotely connected to the Obama legacy.

On the environmental front, he has targeted Obama regulations regarding clean power, fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump, who believes the jury remains out on global warming, reveled in his plan to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty.

“The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense,” Trump said June 1, 2017, in the Rose Garden.” They don’t put America first. I do, and I always will.”

The president has opened up federal lands for energy development and now wants to do the same for offshore drilling.

Taking a page from Don Quixote, Trump recently turned his attention to wind turbines, suggesting they cause cancer, reduce property values and are unreliable.

“Let’s put up some windmills,” he told an Ohio rally last month. “When the wind doesn’t blow, just turn off the television, darling, please. There’s no wind. Please turn off the television quickly.” That’s nuts.

The New York Times reported April 3 that electrical grid operators use a diverse array of power sources, so if the wind stops blowing, lights and TVs stay on.

But truth doesn’t really matter to Trump, who yesterday blamed Obama for establishing a child separation policy at the southern border, which, of course, our hero stopped.

“President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it, okay,” Trump said April 9.

That’s not okay.

The Washington Post gave Trump a four Pinocchio rating, its highest ranking, for his child separation whopper.

Once Trump starts taking credit for environmental progress, the DC Post will have to come up with a higher Pinocchio score or establish a new category.

How about a ten smokestack or oily bird category?