On Wednesday, Donald Trump headlined a fundraiser for energy CEOs in Texas, barely weeks after promising industry leaders that he would ease regulations on their businesses and asking for $1 billion in donations.
The former president and expected Republican 2024 White House nominee has made no secret of his ambition to unleash the oil and gas industry if elected in November, regularly evoking the pledge to “drill, baby, drill” and including it in his plan to be a “dictator” for a day.
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During a December town hall in Iowa, when Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Trump if he wanted to be a dictator, he responded, “No, no, no—other than day one. We’re sealing the border and drilling away.” After that, I am not a dictator.”
Trump has campaigned and raised money throughout his hush money trial in New York City, which will come to a climax on Tuesday when prosecutors and defense attorneys make final arguments to the jury before deliberations begin in the first criminal case involving a former president in US history.
During his first term, Trump courted the oil and gas companies on a regular basis, including the choice of former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State in 2017.
In 2024, Trump’s attempts have sparked criticism from environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers. They claim Trump is putting the presidency up for sale in order to promote polluting fossil fuels and undermine President Joe Biden’s clean energy efforts.
“Donald Trump is going directly from the courtroom to courting Big Oil,” said Alex Glass, managing director of communications at Climate Power.
Glass claimed that Trump was in Houston “to cash in on his pitch to Big Oil that, for the bargain price of $1 billion in campaign contributions, will save them $110 billion in promised tax breaks while Americans are left to foot the bill.”
The invitation stated that Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources, Kelcy Warren, the executive chairman of Energy Transfer Partners, and Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, sponsored the lunch.
Protesters outside the hotel brandished posters reading “Out of Court/Courting Big Oil.”
According to the Washington Post, Trump hosted an oil CEO gathering in April at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump encouraged the executives to “raise $1 billion to return me to the White House” and promised to “immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and prevent new ones from being enacted,” according to the Post.
The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., wrote to nine energy industry CEOs, demanding information regarding what he called “quid pro quo financial agreements related to U.S. energy policy.”
In an accompanying statement, Raskin stated that “media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in exchange for large campaign contributions.”
The national communications secretary for the Trump campaign, Karoline Leavitt, claims that environmental extremists “control Biden and are trying to implement the most radical energy agenda in history.”
According to her, “people who share his vision of American energy dominance to protect our national security and bring down the cost of living for all Americans” support Trump.
