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Trump Second Administration

Watch RFK Jr.’s Horrified Expression as Trump Announces ‘Expedited’ Environmental Approvals For Ultra-Rich Polluters

Be careful there. Trump doesn't like dissent.

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It wasn’t actually any big surprise when Donald Trump took to Truth Social two days ago to announce that billionaires would get special privileges once he takes office again. It took almost no time after that for Elon Musk to tweet on his own platform how excited he was to see that happen.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

In fact, in subsequent days, Trump has been crowing about how he intends to bypass normal approval methods in order to allow environmental permits to be “expedited” for those “investing” a billion dollars or more “in America.”

In another video tweeted on Truth Social by the president-elected, you can see a clip of Stephen Miller outlining Trump’s first 100 days, and the very first line item he mentions is “Rapid, total, complete deregulation of American energy exploration.” Apparently the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, National monuments, everything is on the table for drilling and otherwise exploiting our natural resources.

But at least one member of the incoming administration looks like he’s a little bit worried about what that might look like at the end of the day. Robert F. Kennedy, Junior, who is slated to serve as head of Health and Human Services might tell you that clean air and water are essential to HIS job of protecting Americans’ health.

After all, he’s worked with Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for years. At both agencies, in his role as an environmental lawyer, he has scored massive, groundbreaking legal victories against giant corporate polluters.

The folks that Trump just promised a license to do anything they want.

Now, don’t get me wrong: It was clear that Kennedy had sold his soul the day he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump. It took just days after Trump announced Kennedy’s involvement in the upcoming administration before he allowed himself to be photographed eating fast food from McDonald’s, something Kennedy has disparaged for years.

And yes, Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist with some very dangerous ideas about vaccines and medicine in general, and a terrible choice for the agency that he’s been tapped to lead.

But it’s going to take something more than chicken nuggets to make Kennedy forget the actual work he’s been doing since he became a lawyer in 1982.

In this video of Trump making basically the same announcement during an appearance at the New York Stock Exchange this morning to ring the opening bell, you can see Kennedy in the background behind the president-elect looking more and more distraught at what he’s hearing.

Anybody investing a billion dollars or more gets a very expedited approval process. Because, you know, the approvals, when people come into the country, it takes them, in many cases 14, 15, 16 years to get the approval.

…

Like, a, uh, nuclear power plant, I would say a week would be enough time? What do you think? Is that okay? We’re gonna get fast approvals.

He talks about Lee Zeldin, who he just nominated to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, being a big part of fast-tracking those approvals. Zeldin never asked for the role, and in fact, is wholly unqualified for it except in the sense that before HE sold his soul, he would occasionally collaborate with moderates and environmental groups to protect land and wildlife.

Trump selected him because as Zeldin evolved politically, he became fully a yes-man for Trump, and Trump therefore knows that Zeldin will implement whatever policies he wants at the EPA, especially those are are friendly to developers.

Much of the looking-offstage talking is done with Zeldin in the video.

But focus on the face of Robert F, Kennedy, Jr. as Trump says his piece before the rich men and women at the NYSE. It goes from bad to worse in a pretty short span:

That face could be the face of a man who’s thinking about this:

It could be because he can hear the names Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Love Canal all swimming around with the worms in his brain. Whatever it is, Kennedy knows this is a raw deal for Mother Earth.

And his face is betraying him.

Andrew Simpson
meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

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