Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has found a safe space to talk about his expensive first-class travel habit: conservative talk radio. On Wednesday, The Washington Post pointed out a few interviews the EPA chief has given recently. It turns out, Pruitt has plopped down in front of regional conservative-media hosts to defend himself against accusations that he is wasting taxpayer money on first-class travel and high-priced hotels.

“I’m a little bit dumbfounded by the kind of media narratives,” Pruitt told conservative host Mark Reardon on KMOX in St. Louis last week. Pruitt said the $120,000 he spent to go to Italy last summer was pennies compared with former President Barack Obama’s EPA administrators, whom he claimed spent far more on international travel. “The Obama EPA heads ... they spent $1 million on foreign trips during their time, so 10 times more,” Pruitt said. Satisfied with this response, Reardon moved on with the interview.

Oregon-based conservative host Lars Larson didn’t even need Pruitt’s response to know that Obama was truly to blame. “They’ve been all over you about travel costs,” Larson said in his interview with Pruitt. “And yet, I haven’t seen one of the news organizations—not one of the mainstream, certainly the conservatives have—saying, ‘Well, [Obama’s EPA chiefs] both spent similar amounts or greater amounts of travel than you did, didn’t they?’” Pruitt agreed: The media was not covering the travel costs of Obama’s EPA. “The Obama EPA heads before I arrived spent nearly $1 million on foreign trips,” Pruitt said. “I think our costs last year were a little more than $100,000.”

“That sounds pretty conservative to me,” Larson replied, as though comparing one year of costs to eight years was not wrongheaded on its face. Considering their purported hatred for wasteful spending, one would think conservative radio hosts and publications would push back a bit on Pruitt’s story.

Instead, Pruitt’s narrative has flourished on conservative media. It started last Wednesday, when the Washington Free Beacon said it was provided “internal EPA documents” that showed lavish spending by Obama’s EPA chiefs. A spokesperson for Pruitt’s EPA, Jahan Wilcox, was happy to comment: “The double-standard couldn’t be more clear,” he told the Beacon. The next day, Fox News aggregated the story with no original reporting but with a definitive headline: “Obama’s EPA appointees spent as much, or more, on travel than Trump’s Pruitt, data show.”