"You're just crazy enough to work for me"

Long before he was flying high in taxpayer-funded private jets and First Class luxury seats to Europe, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt was just a good ol’ bigoted state senator from Oklahoma. Pruitt sat for a series of interviews with KFAQ-AM in 2005 and those interviews were recently turned over to Politico.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt dismissed evolution as an unproven theory, lamented that “minority religions” were pushing Christianity out of “the public square” and advocated amending the Constitution to ban abortion, prohibit same-sex marriage and protect the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments, according to a newly unearthed series of Oklahoma talk radio shows from 2005. Pruitt, who at the time was a state senator, also described the Second Amendment as divinely granted and condemned federal judges as a “judicial monarchy” that is “the most grievous threat that we have today." And he did not object when the program’s host described Islam as “not so much a religion as it is a terrorist organization in many instances.”

After that, Pruitt rose the ranks of Oklahoma politics by covering himself in gas and oil money, pretending that the earth wasn’t shaking, and displaying the craven attitude towards humanity that passes for Republican exceptionalism. As head of the EPA he has said that he believes God called him to do the work of ignoring climate change and rolling back all of the Obama-era rules of regulation aimed at tasking humans with being stewards to God’s green earth. Asked about his anti-evolutionary beliefs, as stated here:

“There aren’t sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution, and it deals with the origins of man, which is more from a philosophical standpoint than a scientific standpoint,” he said in one part of the series, in which Pruitt and the program's hosts discussed issues related to the Constitution.

The EPAs spokesperson told Politico that the EPA is now headed by snowflakes that don’t care for your book learning ways.

EPA would not say this week whether any of Pruitt’s positions have changed since 2005. Asked whether the administrator’s skepticism about a major foundation of modern science such as evolution could conflict with the agency's mandate to make science-based decisions, spokesman Jahan Wilcox told POLITICO that “if you're insinuating that a Christian should not serve in capacity as EPA administrator, that is offensive and a question that does not warrant any further attention."

What’s offensive is someone being in charge of a scientifically-based agency, whose responsibility is to use the best scientific evidence in order to craft policies and safety regulations for the living things in and around America. There are tons and tons of other “Christian” greatest hits like attacking climate change, saying gay people getting married is the end of days, and Islam is probably mostly an amorphous “terrorism.”

Politico's podcast here.