On Thursday morning, the EPA issued a press release intended to champion President Trump’s energy executive order but ended up doing the opposite.
On Thursday morning, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a press release intended to champion President Trump’s executive order on energy and climate, notes Mashable.
It was quickly noted by many that the opening segment of the release wasn’t entirely on-message.
According to The Week, included was a quote from Democratic Senator Tom Carper "who did not support Trump's order rolling back several Obama-era policies addressing climate change."
The quote read, in part, “With this executive order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand. Walking away from the Clean Power Plan and other climate initiatives, including critical resiliency projects is not just irresponsible — it's irrational. Today's executive order calls into question America's credibility and our commitment to tackling the greatest environmental challenge of our lifetime. With the world watching, President Trump and Administrator Pruitt have chosen to shirk our responsibility, disregard clear science, and undo the significant progress our country has made to ensure we leave a better, more sustainable planet for generations to come."
A revised release was sent out soon after and included the quotes from Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, which celebrated Trump’s action.
It read, in part, “Stopping this disastrous plan will preserve America’s coal industry, expand our manufacturing renaissance that is reliant upon affordable energy, and protect American families from unprecedented hikes in their electric bills."
"EPA spokesman John Konkus swiftly said the whole thing was an 'unfortunate' error -- a case of an internal draft 'mistakenly sent with a quote that belonged to Senator Carper but was wrongly attributed to Senator Capito, whom we originally meant to quote,'" notes Bloomberg.
