ABSTRACT
Donald Trump ran in 2016 promising that he would clean up corruption in Washington and take on the Establishment on behalf of “forgotten Americans.” He staged rallies with coal miners in West Virginia and signed an executive order overturning Obama’s “job killing” Clean Power Plan as he declared an end to the “War on Coal.” Later he announced the withdrawal of the United States from the COP 21 Paris climate treaty. Like Reagan before him, Trump appointed people to head the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management who were hostile to the regulatory missions that these agencies had been created to carry out. Like Reagan, Trump’s appointees to head the EPA and the Department of Interior were forced to resign due to scandals. Given this record, James Morton Turner’s and Andrew C. Isenberg’s description of the Trump administration as the “culmination” of Republican anti-environmentalism seems apt. Trump is also, however, the quintessential example of a demagogic figure who employed the language of right-wing sham eco-populism in order to serve the interests of industry rather than someone who was motivated primarily by ideology or the desire to serve the interests of constituents like coal miners.
