Trump promises oil and gas executives a free pass – if they contribute $1 billion to the campaign

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Donald Trump has turned Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, into a prophet. He said four weeks ago New York Times contributor Thomas Edsall that some of the conservative victories in campaign finance law – esp Citizens united – have “strengthened the power of elected officials to coerce donations from donors.” He added that there has always been “an element of adversarial dependence built into campaign fundraising. Companies have always given money to gain access or to prevent bad things from happening to them when those in power felt that certain supporters were abandoning them.”

What is different today is the possibility of extortion – a consequence of Citizens United that no one fully appreciated at the time the case was decided. The irony of inviting major donors and corporations to make large or unlimited donations is that it reinforces the inappropriate relationship between donors and government leaders. Republican donors sought to lift restrictions on them, believing it would “benefit them,” Cain said. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. “Trump's mafia operating mode We can count on us to take this to the extreme,” Cain said.

Trump makes a proposal during dinner

How prophetic. The WashingtonPost reported on May 9, 2024 that during a meeting with fossil fuel company executives at Mar-A-Lago in April, Trump suggested they should meet and donate $1 billion to get him re-elected. Once in office, he pledged to immediately roll back dozens of President Biden's environmental regulations and policies and prevent new ones from being introduced, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxes and regulations they would avoid.

Trump's remarkably blunt and transactional tone shows how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his re-election bid. At the same time, he has turned to industry to shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including rolling back some of Biden's signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.

The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be greater. The mail said. Biden has called global warming an “existential threat,” and over the past three years his administration has issued 100 new environmental regulations aimed at reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, limiting toxic chemicals and conserving public lands and waters. By comparison, Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and his administration has weakened or overturned more than 125 environmental regulations and policies in four years.

In recent months, the Biden administration has worked to undo Trump's environmental measures and enact new ones before the November election. So far, Biden officials have reversed 27 Trump actions affecting the fossil fuel industry and completed 23 new actions affecting the sector, according to a WashingtonPost analysis. For example, the Department of the Interior recently blocked future oil drilling in 13 million acres of Alaska's Arctic.

Despite the oil industry's complaints about Biden's policies, the United States is now producing more oil than any country ever has; last year an average of almost 13 million barrels per day was pumped. ExxonMobil and Chevron, the largest US energy companies, reported their biggest annual profits in a decade last year.

Still, oil giants will see an even bigger windfall — helped by new offshore drilling, faster permitting and other relaxed regulations — in a second Trump administration, Trump told the executives at the dinner. He promised to immediately end the freeze on new permits LNG terminals in the Gulf of Mexico, introduced by the Biden administration. “You get it on the first day,” he said, according to the recollection of one person present.

The roughly 20 executives invited included Mike Sabel, the CEO and founder of Venture Global, and Jack Fusco, the CEO of Cheniere Energy, whose proposed projects would directly benefit from the lifting of the pause on new LNG exports. Other attendees came from companies including Chevron, Continental Resources, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, according to an attendance list obtained by The mail.

Trump and the Quid Pro Quo

Trump also told executives he would auction more oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, a priority raised by several executives. He denounced wind energy and said he would roll back restrictions on drilling in Alaska's Arctic. “You've been waiting for a permit for five years. You will get it on day one,” Trump promised.

Additionally, he said he would scrap Biden's “mandate” on electric vehicles. Those rules require automakers to do so reduce emissions from car tailpipes, but they do not require any specific technology, like electric cars. The fossil fuel industry has lobbied aggressively against the EPA's exhaust rules, which could hurt demand for its petroleum products. The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, an industry trade group, has launched a seven-figure campaign against what it calls a in fact “Ban on petrol cars.” The campaign includes ads in battleground states warning that the rule will limit consumer choice.

While rolling back the latest EPA rule on tailpipe emissions would benefit the fossil fuel industry, it would anger the auto industry, which has invested billions of dollars in the transition away from gasoline-powered cars. Many carmakers are under increasing pressure to sell more electric cars in Europe, which has tightened its own tailpipe emissions rules, and are keen to avoid a patchwork of regulations around the world.

“Automakers need some level of regulatory certainty from the government,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota and other auto companies. “What has emerged instead is a wholesale repeal … and then a reintroduction … and then repealing the regulations every four or eight years.”

A key figure leading the Trump campaign's energy policy development is North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who has spoken extensively with oil donors and CEOs. At a fundraiser on Saturday in Palm Beach, Florida, Burgum told donors that Trump would stop Biden's “assault” on fossil fuels, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The mail. “What would be the most important thing President Trump could do on day one? It is stopping the hostile attack on all American energy, and I mean all of it,” Burgum said. “Whether it's base load electricity, whether it's oil, whether it's gas, whether it's ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels.”

Burgum also criticized the Biden administration's policies on gas stoves and internal combustion engine vehicles, claiming it would discourage consumers from purchasing both technologies. Although the Energy Department recently established new efficiency standards for gas stoves, they do not affect the stoves in people's kitchens or the stoves currently on the market.

“They have a liberal idea of ​​what products we need,” Burgum said. “You all need EV cars. You don't need internal combustion. We decide what kind of car you're going to drive, and we're going to decommission the other cars. I mean, it applies to every industry, not just cars, not just energy. They tell people which stoves you can buy. This isn't America.”

The Biden campaign initially declined to comment on the WashingtonPost article, but after it was published, Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa issued a statement saying, “Donald Trump is selling working families to Big Oil for campaign checks. It's that simple. Trump doesn't care that oil and gas companies let working families and middle-class Americans pay whatever they want while raking in record profits. If Donald can cash a check, he will do what they say,” Moussa added.

Alex Witt, a senior oil and gas advisor at Climate PowerTrump's promise is that he will do what the oil industry wants if they support him. With Trump, Witt said, “Everything has a price. They made a tremendous return on their investment during Trump's first term, and Trump is making it crystal clear that they are in for an even bigger payout if he is re-elected.”

The takeaway

Donald Trump is the world's biggest loser. His entire career was one business failure after another – Trump Shuttle (an airline), Trump Steaks, Trump University and a Trump casino in Atlantic City were all disasters. He should teach a course at the Wharton School, of him alma materabout how Not to do business. His entire existence is based on myth. Most people forget that he was a student of Roy Cohn, the madman who advised Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon on the power of illusion. He was also under the spell of Vince McMahon, the impresario who created the WWE, which showcased the illusion of sports over the real thing.

Citizens united has turned the US election into a quasi-criminal enterprise. Greed and fear now reinforce each other. Samuel Issacharoff, a constitutional law professor at NYU, told Thomas Edsall: “Trump is governing in a swirl of corruption and intimidation. Everyone knows this and understands that in such regimes, proximity to power is the key to government largesse. In oligarchic regimes we see this reflected in the enormous population concentrations in the capital. Here, aspirants flock to Mar-a-Lago.”

Edsall concluded his piece for the New York Times with this observation: “They want to contribute, and be seen as contributing, because power and privilege come from proximity. Trump may consider himself a latter-day Louis XIV, including in his love of gilding. But in more recent times, this is the style of governance of the banana republic dictators of the 20th century and the populist anti-democrats of the 21st century.”

And so, as the world's most respected climate scientists tell us The guard That higher average global temperatures of 2.5°C – or more – are now likely no longer possible Thanks to our disinterest in taking climate warming seriously, Trump tells us outright that he will happily waste the rest of the Earth's available carbon budget to satisfy his own insatiable need for adoration and power.

There is no need to think deeply about the next election in November. Either you want to continue to have a sustainable planet to live on, or you want the fossil fuel oligarchs to become even richer than they already are, at the expense of the environment. The choice couldn't be clearer.