[Public Citizen tweeted Thursday: “We turned Trump’s #draintheswamp campaign ad on its head to expose who he really is — a corporatist, not a populist.” See the video.]

Thursday, it was reported Donald Trump would nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. Friday morning, many media outlets are reporting U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is expected to be his nominee for secretary of the interior. See: “Revealed: The Trump Administration’s Energy Plan.”

STEVE HORN, steve [at] desmogblog.com, @SteveAHorn
Horn is an investigative journalist and writer for DeSmogBlog.com. He just wrote the piece “The Billionaire Energy Investor Who Vetted Trump’s EPA Pick Has Long List of EPA Violations.”

Horn said today: “Missed in most tales about Scott Pruitt being Trump’s nominee at EPA is that a multi-billionaire energy investor, Carl Icahn, actually vetted and interviewed finalists for the Trump EPA job. And Icahn, a business partner of Trump and a donor to his campaign, owns significant assets which would be and have been impacted by EPA regulations. This is not what ‘draining the swamp’ looks like, but more like what a Banana Republic looks like.”

Horn writes: “Asked for his take on President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), multi-billionaire investor and Trump business partner Carl Icahn told Bloomberg that Pruitt is ‘going to really be a breath of fresh air.’ Given Icahn’s business ties, that statement is steeped in accidental irony. … A DeSmog investigation shows that Icahn Enterprises owns oil industry assets based in Oklahoma, which are involved in EPA enforcement violations, and does business with TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline system.”