“My message is to have someone who is really interested in the environment," former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said of his advice for picking the next head of the EPA. | Hans Punz/AFP/Getty Images Schwarzenegger: Pruitt resignation is ‘fantastic’

SAN FRANCISCO — Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of President Donald Trump’s highest-profile environmental critics on Twitter, called the resignation of EPA director Scott Pruitt Thursday a “fantastic” development — one he said now rids Washington of a man who wrongly challenged California’s leadership on tough auto emissions standards and who “had no interest whatsoever to protect the people’’ on environmental protection.

“It’s about time,” he tweeted of Pruitt’s departure. “He will go down in the history books as the worst EPA administrator we’ve ever had.”


“This is a fantastic day that he’s gone, but of course it doesn’t mean that the problem is gone,’’ said Schwarzenegger, who months ago called for Pruitt’s resignation from the Environmental Protection Agency.

In an interview with POLITICO Thursday, Schwarzenegger warned that Andrew Wheeler, who will replace Pruitt as acting director, is “the wrong guy” to protect Americans’ health and environment.

“If you want to really do a good job with the environment, you don’t have a coal lobbyist be the leader of the EPA,’’ Schwarzenegger said. “You do what one of our heroes did, Ronald Reagan [who] appointed one of the top scientists in the world studying air pollution,’’ he said. “That’s what you really want — the brightest and the best.”

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Asked for his message to Trump about his next pick for EPA administrator, Schwarzenegger said: “My message is to have someone who is really interested in the environment, and someone who is going to fight for the people, and who is really feeling part of the world community.”

“Because it’s global warming,’’ he said. “It’s not American warming or China warning or Russia warning or European warming. It’s global — and we’re concerned that worldwide pollution doesn’t have any boundaries, doesn’t have any borders.

“Without any doubt this is the most challenging time ... a time that we can really turn the whole things around,’’ Schwarzenegger warned. “And we really can reverse the amount of people who are dying every year because of pollution. But we need, now more than ever, good leadership.”

The Republican former governor, who passed a landmark climate change bill while in office, recently wrote that the EPA director has been “struck in the polluting past” on car emissions standards and called Pruitt to task on social media, saying that despite his leadership of the agency, “California is showing the way to a cleaner, profitable future” by being “ahead of the rest of the nation in economic growth and in lowing emissions standards.”

In April, Pruitt announced the EPA’s effort to roll back Obama-era rules that required automakers to meet tough emissions and mileage standards by 2020 — a move that sparked a showdown with California’s tough standards. Pruitt said then that despite California’s efforts to toughen standards, that “doesn’t mean one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country.”

A defiant Schwarzenegger told Yahoo News in an email last month that “when I was governor, the EPA thought they could stop us, and we won. The EPA even tried to claim that greenhouse gases were not a pollutant, and we took them all the way to the Supreme Court and we won that. Mr. Pruitt, I can assure you that California and those who believe in a cleaner future, will win it again.”

Last week, he tweeted to Trump: “So, @realDonaldTrump, if you want to be an action hero, let's retrain those coal miners for new, safer jobs. Don't stand in the way of the market to protect a polluting, inferior product. Unless, of course, you also want to save Blockbuster and Beanie Babies.”

On Thursday, Schwarzenegger told POLITICO that the next EPA administrator needs to closely assess how California’s environmental protection and green economy have set not only new standards — but a lesson for the rest of the nation.

His advice to Trump, “Just follow what California is doing. It’s that simple,’’ he said. “California has the most aggressive environmental laws, the most protection of the environment — and at the same time, you have seen the effects economically,’’ he said. “It has actually helped our economy and created a whole other green economy … and we have seen California has become the No. 1 state when it comes to achieving green growth and the kinds of jobs.’’

Asked about the defection of his past campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, from the Republican Party, Schwarzenegger said that while he respected the decision of Schmidt — now an MSNBC analyst — he would take another path, even in the face of what he called the “disarray” and disappointment with the federal government on environmental issues.

“I’m a fighter — and I will fight from here to eternity to make the Republican Party come to its senses again,” he said, evoking the memory of Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and other Republican leaders.

“[They] looked at issues in not such a crazy way, ‘’ he said, adding that he maintains hope the administration will “do what is right for the country and not sell out to the lobbies.”