Who Will Run EPA?; Trump Transition
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to THE LEAD. As the world tries to figure out just what comes next, one of the clearest policy differences between the current president and his successor, president-elect Trump, has to do with combating climate change. President-elect Trump has made no bones about his belief, contrary to the vast majority of scientists, that manmade climate change is not a legitimate phenomenon and now he is tapping one of the nation's leading climate change deniers to head the transition for the Environmental Protection Agency, someone who may not want the agency to exist at all.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We're going to cancel billions and billions of dollars in payments to the United Nations' climate change programs and use the money to fix America's environmental infrastructure.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): Suffice it to say Donald Trump is not a big believer in manmade climate change, contrary to the views and data of the vast majority of scientists.</s>TRUMP: Our plan will end the EPA, which is a -- hey, look, it's all wonderful, but it's a disaster.</s>TAPPER: That's why the former EPA administrators under Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush hammered Trump during the election for pledging to yank the U.S. from the Paris accords, an international agreement to fight climate change, a move they said -- quote -- "would set the world back decades."</s>MYRON EBELL, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT: My name is Myron Ebell.</s>TAPPER: Leading the Trump transition on environmental matters is an avid climate change denier, a man who was once funded by the tobacco industry to fight those seeking to further regulate cigarettes. Myron Ebell is the director for the Center for Energy and Environment, part of a libertarian think tank that -- quote -- "questions global warming alarmism," partly funded by some of the same industries such as coal that are being hurt by the regulations of the fossil fuel industry. Ebell has long fight against environmental regulations, arguing they're an extension of government power. As he told PBS in 2012, he rejects the reams of data and evidence suggesting that manmade climate change is real.</s>EBELL: We believe that the so-called global warming consensus was not based on science, but was a political consensus.</s>TAPPER: That's rejecting evidence accepted by most scientists as well as a growing number of Republicans, including former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis.</s>BOB INGLIS (R), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: It's really quite comical, really, to have one of the merchants of doubt as the head of EPA. That really would be a continuing joke on America.</s>TAPPER: As founder of environmental group republicEn, Inglis says there must be a way everyone can move together, a balanced way.</s>INGLIS: This is for real. And it's happening to us now. We want to take care of the problem. It may be, just may be that somebody like Donald Trump could show that there is a free enterprise answer to climate change. But he won't show it if he's got Myron Ebell as the director, as the administrator of EPA, however.</s>TAPPER: Trump's appointee will also have the power to affect how we work with the international community to combat a changing environment that's proven deadly time and again. Ebell tops Trump's list less than a year after protesters publicly named him a climate criminal during an annual U.N. conference in Paris.</s>EBELL: I'm used to that from the far left. But I did go out and get my photo taken with my poster, just so I have it as a memento.</s>TAPPER: When the online channel Climate Home caught up with Ebell, he made his priorities clear.</s>EBELL: I hope whoever is elected president in 2017, of whatever party, will undo the EPA power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy.</s>TAPPER: Let's bring in our panel now. Joining us, CNN political analyst Jackie Kucinich, who is Washington bureau chief of The Daily Beast, CNN political commentator Mary Katharine Ham, who is a senior writer at The Federalist. Also with me, David Ignatius, foreign affairs columnist at "The Washington Post." And, Jackie, first of all, beyond his position, is this draining the swamp to have somebody so affiliated with these environmental -- I'm sorry -- these energy industries to be in charge of energy policy?</s>JACKIE KUCINICH, THE DAILY BEAST: I mean, there's -- I feel like there's two parts to draining the swamp. Right? This is draining the regulations. This is about regulations. It's not about necessarily what you just said, having maybe some interests that you shouldn't have if you are the secretary of energy. That said, it just -- this is what Donald Trump said he was going to do. This is what -- why some people particularly in places like coal country voted for him, because he said that he would roll back these regulations. If this surprises anybody, I guess you weren't paying attention during the election.</s>TAPPER: Absolutely not a surprise. Mary Katharine, you know Mr. Ebell, right?</s>MARY KATHARINE HAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I know -- I have worked with CEI in the past and done events with them. So...</s>TAPPER: So?</s>HAM: I am a libertarian radical on this regulation stuff, to put it nicely. No. But I think, look, I think most Americans, their relationship with the EPA comes more from fuel standards that may make their cars less efficient and make their fuel more expensive or things like the coal regulations that make it tougher to get a job in the area. Their relationship with the EPA is not the same as a college-educated Ivy League kid who is panicky about climate change. It's just not the same. And I think the question was always with climate change not this adherence to whether it's true or not, but the question of what the government can actually do to change any of it. I think certainly the Paris accords and things like that, most Americans are like, yes, I'm not seeing that work real well.</s>TAPPER: David, what do you think?</s>DAVID IGNATIUS, COLUMNIST, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, I think first putting Ebell on the transition team is a symbolic action. It is an attempt to deliver for Trump's voters. I am reminded of how Ronald Reagan appointed James Watt as secretary of the interior 30 years ago, again, in a symbolic move. It was deeply upsetting to environmentalists back then. These regulations will be harder to undo than Trump and Ebell have implied. And, also, there is so much momentum in the world now toward carbon reduction, sustainability. If you are a big global company trying to sell products, you want to be seen as pro-environment. You want to be seen as caring about the issue of climate change. And, you know, regulations, one way or the other, I don't think are going to change that business reality that companies want to be seen as being involved in this.</s>HAM: In which case I think that's a good reason not to panic about a guy who can get probably get sort of incremental change done and streamlining done at the EPA while there is a cultural consensus that companies should be working on this.</s>TAPPER: Let's talk more broadly about the transition. I do not remember this much at least described chaos bend the scenes, Jackie, during the Obama transition or the Bush transition, although we should point out it was three weeks until president-elect Obama named a Cabinet official. So, it's not as if not having named anybody a week out is symbolic of anything at all.</s>KUCINICH: Right. Well, right. It just there is a lot of palace intrigue here, though, right? And also the other thing is I feel like I am at a balloon festival. There are so many trial balloons. There is a new name every day. Some make sense, some make absolutely no sense whatsoever and we vet them all. But it does seem like we're being thrown off in some ways. And only -- you know, only a couple of people actually know who is actually being vetted, who is real. And that's hard to decipher here because no one was expecting to be covering -- let's be honest -- to be covering a Trump transition.</s>TAPPER: I don't think the Trump transition was expecting to be covering the Trump transition.</s>KUCINICH: And hence the chaos.</s>TAPPER: David, let me ask you, is all the intrigue right now because Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, has reportedly been purging not only former governor -- or former transition head Governor Chris Christie from the transition team, but also all these people who are fairly well-respected in Washington from -- who were affiliated with Christie? Kushner obviously hates Christie because Christie prosecuted his father back in 2005. None of this seems to me to have anything to do with how well Donald Trump can staff up an administration. Is this good advice that he is listening to?</s>IGNATIUS: Well, I think there is kind of a Night of the Long Knives quality as this Trump team sorts out who is going to be on top, who is going to have the president-elect's ear. Jared Kushner is a person who has a deep political personal history with Christie. I think there was general concern among the traditional foreign policy group in Washington when Mike Rogers, who was a key transition figure, former House Intelligence Committee chairman, a conservative Republican, but somebody who worked very hard to make his committee work, when he was removed, ousted from a key position over the weekend and others came into the center. I think the issue really is, are they going to have qualified, experienced people directing these most sensitive activities of the U.S. government or people who are less knowledgeable, less trustworthy?</s>TAPPER: All right, David Ignatius, Mary Katharine Ham, Jackie Kucinich, thank you, one and all. With friends like this. President Trump garnering praise from some brutal foreign dictators -- that story next.