With many in Washington scratching their heads over Donald Trump’s attempts to “drain the swamp,” the rest of America is holding on tight with hopes that maybe there’s a silver lining in all of this — better jobs, and more household income, for one thing.
Others assume this is all a good bit of trolling on Trump’s part.
But over the past week the billionaire president-elect has doubled-down on his campaign promises to focus on creating a pro-business environment that sees far fewer regulations, and create an atmosphere where wealthy businesses get even wealthier. The hope is, of course, that some of that wealth will be shared with the workers.
So let’s take a look at what Trump has done over the past week to ensure that outcome. Here are five things he’s doing to “unleash” the economic potential of the United States:
Trump has picked an EPA chief who is opposed to conserving nature
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Wikimedia Commons)
Mr. Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, has been openly combative of any science that may point to global warming as being. Trump found admiration in that quality, among others, and named him the new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The pair will presumably roll back regulations created to protect the environment. The Sierra Club calls the nomination “like appointing Darth Vader to lead the Rebel Alliance.”
The SBA gets a wrestling icon who runs a huge monopoly
The WWF Championship belt was held by the likes of Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Wikimedia Commons)
Small business, sh-mall business. Linda McMahon, co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment — who in the 1980s and 1990s gobbled up all of the independent wrestling “territories” for one big, global conglomerate — was nominated this week to be put in charge of the the Small Business Association, which has a presence in every state in America.
Although she grew the WWE into a billion-dollar publicly traded company alongside husband Vince, Mrs. McMahon also attempted to run for public office twice, spending around $100 million on U.S. Senate bids in 2010 and 2012. Her opponents in both races defeated McMahon handily.
According to Entrepreneur, McMahon has stated her goal as the SBA chief would be to help small businesses “grow and thrive.” No word yet if she’ll hang a banner with the words, “You’re fired!” on the wall in every office.
Our new labor secretary wants to replace humans with robots
Charlotte McKinney introduces the “all-natural burger” during Super Bowl XLIX (YouTube/Screen Grab)
Why pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour for those pesky humans when we can just get some robots that won’t ever mess up? That’s a fun thought, and one that’s been written by perhaps this week’s most shocking Cabinet appointment, Andrew Puzder.
He is the CEO of fast-food burger joints Carls Jr. and Hardees, and in the past has been accused by an ex-wife of abuse much like Trump. He has also had to defend his company’s image over its use of ads depicting scantily clad women, saying, “I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.”
In this manner he is very Trumpian, indeed.
The rumored director of public lands is of ‘drill, baby drill’ persuasion
A power plant produces smog (Pixabay)
In a leaked memo, it was discovered this week that Trump is reportedly expected to nominate Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) to lead the Department of the Interior.
In the past, Rodgers has voted to turn over public lands to fossil fuel companies. Of course, she is also an opponent of federal regulations intended to curb carbon pollution and has opposed giving tax incentives for clean energy creation, according to Friends of Earth.