‘Transaction Trump’ Seems To Have Proposed Literal Quid Pro Quo To Big Oil

Long before Citizen’s United it was a given that campaign finance, especially for fedearl office was so awash in money that practically speaking bribery had been legalized. While there have been limits all along on how much an individual or couple can donate directly to a candidate in a given year, PACs and Super-PACs had established a legal way for people with financial means to get around the limit. Lobbyists can funnel huge amounts of money “indirectly” to influence both policy and legislation. It’s bribery under a different name, at least in theory as long as there’s no specific quid pro quo. As in “give me x amount of dollars and I’ll do this specific thing(s) in return. For example an elected official can say give me a million dollars and I’ll vote for/against this or that piece of legislation. Well folks, it seems like Trump has proposed a literal quid pro quo to to oil executives.

According to this Washington Post article Trump had himself a sit-down with the honchos of big oil. People who’s companies set a new record for profit seemingly every year, year after year. They also get billions in tax subsidies from the federal government. These are people and companies who definitely are NOT hurting and who DON’T need a dime of help from the federal government to make profits hand over fist every year. Sure, they spend money on lobbyists to get and keep the largesse they receive, and as we’ve learned for about seven decades knew of the coming problem of climate change and developed a sophisticated plan to hide both the problem and their role in it.

As I said big oil (even small oil) has profited handsomely my entire life, knowing all along their efforts to fight regulation and accountability were a threat to our world’s climate and that someday the bill for the damage would come due. Big oil doesn’t like it that Democratic administrations are much more likely to try and rein them in than Republican ones. Despite their profits they want to keep every penny of their subsidies. They DON’T like paying taxes (who does?) and they hate regulation.

President Biden has set about changing policy in ways they HATE. As the WaPo notes President Biden is clear about climate change being an existential threat, while Trump calls it a hoax. Biden’s crafted a hundred new environmental regulations to address things like reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters. By contrast Trump’s general gutting of regulation during his four  years included weakening or eliminating more than 125 environmental policies, rules and regulations.

It’s a no-brainer that oil executives would prefer Trump to Biden. They know Trump has no f**ks to give when it comes to tax breaks that benefit the very richest, or gutting regulations to allow rich people and/or corporations to pay less taxes and via reduced regulations increase profits.  Given that it makes sense they’d be willing, even eager to make a pilgrimage to Mar A Lago last month to meet with Trump. The WaPo article doesn’t say so, but I’d imagine they had a “one-pager” of a “briefing memo” outlining what they hoped a second Trump administration’s environmental policy would look like. And probably a second one with bullet points on some specific things that would help big oil continue setting  record profits.

I’m also certain they agreed in advance they’d make it clear they’d be supporting Trump’s campaign financially. Sure, they’d hedge their bets some with Biden/Democrats but the bulk of their money would go to Trump and GOP candidate’s PACs/Super PACs. The song and dance routine of being ready to donate is one they were familiar with. They have very expensive lawyers worth every bit of money they shell out in legal fees to teach them how to avoid difficult conversations with investigators/prosecutors.  So, as the WaPo reports they were stunned at how things went down.

One of the oil barons complained of them spending (collectively one assumes) some $400 million lobbying and yet Biden was still not giving them any relief. I’m sure he and the rest were expecting a sympathetic response to be followed by a tacit understanding that lots of money would be donated to Trump and that they knew it would be money well invested – wink wink, nod nod. They were startled by Trump’s response.  Per the linked WaPo article: