EPA Chief Scott Pruitt is invited to resign by a mother while eating at Teaism

We can only speculate on what Scott Pruitt thinks when he eats lunch. But he looked relaxed at his Tea Party table on Monday afternoon – exactly 500 days after his appointment as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; five days after the agency's ethics officer recommended broadening the investigation into charges that he had abused his power; About five hours before The Washington Post reported that Pruitt had asked a subordinate to help him find a job, and less than five minutes before Kristin Mink snatched him a smile.

A few tables from the EPA administrator she was dragging her 2 year old child in her seat while she was waiting for her pancake to arrive from the kitchen.

The 33-year-old teacher was spending the day showing city people around the damp heart of Washington, DC, and she may not even have noticed that the administrator of the EPA had asked her husband not to point it.

"He said:" Scott Pruitt is having lunch here now ", recalls Mink. "I'm really bad at recognizing faces, but he said that he was 100% sure."

Mink looked through the restaurant and, yes, he was there: skeptical climate change turned environmental leader, with an elbow on the table and an empty tacos shell stand on his tray. He spoke kindly with a man in a suit on the other side of the table.

"I knew immediately that I had to say something," says Mink. "It was just a question of knowing what."

As his day job teaches sixth grade at Sidwell Friends (where President Barack Obama sent his daughters), Mink recently spent much of his free time protesting President Trump's administration. . She organized a fundraiser to replace a church banner disfigured with a pro-Trump message, white supremacist last year. Just last week, she went to a rally in front of the Justice Ministry to protest the detention of migrant children.

But Mink had never been so close to one of Trump's best deputies. So she began to scribble fleas on the back of her crepe receipt, occasionally consulting her phone to refresh herself about Pruitt's last 500 days.

Circumstances were not ideal for writing a speech. Mink's two-year-old son was still protesting against his seats, and two of the few occupants of his table warned him not to do a scene.

[The owner of the Red Hen explains why she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave]

"They continued to say things about" civility. " Mink was aware of the public debate: recent protests against other Trump officials have taken their meals; the owner of the red hen asks Trump's press secretary to leave; a Democratic congressman calling for harassment of cabinet members. She had read the editorial of the Post about it: "May Trump's team eat in peace."

She understood the argument of civility rather than confrontation and rejected the premise

"I think talking to people is civil. "Mink said." I think other protests are part of the civil discourse. They should want to hear us and hear what we feel. . . Do not leave in public if you do not want to talk to people. "

Mink did not say it as clearly as this in the moment, while she was sitting at her family table of seven people, rushing to write what she meant to say to the administrator of the EPA before leaving theism and its small sphere of influence.

Finally, she decided that she would.

"The message is like a lot for others as well as for him, "said her husband, she says." It must absolutely be recorded. "

So he pulled out his phone, and she stuffed a pacifier into his back pocket and picked up their child 2 years old still agitated, thinking that she had found a way to kill two people.

"[My son] was saying that he wanted to go out," said Mink. "I said: "Let's go outside, we'll stop at this table on the way."

Pruitt's table mate had a hand on his tray when Mink walked to the table, rocking his boy between his shoulders and his speech notes.

The administrator looked up at her and smiled, at first. "Maybe he thought I was a superfan or something," Mink remembers.

"Hi," she told Pruitt. "I just wanted to urge you to resign for what you do for the environment in our country."

Pruitt's smile is lowered.

"It's my son," Mink continued. "He loves animals, he loves clean air, he likes clean water, during this time …" She briefly consulted her receipt. "You're reducing the fuel standards for cars and trucks for big business – you paid $ 50 a night to stay in a DC condo that's connected to an energy lobbying company, while approving their dirty sand pipeline. "

Pruitt had now taken his elbow off the table. He covered one hand with the other, his ring finger writhing on the table next to an empty bowl.

"Uh, we deserve to have someone at the EPA that really protects our environment," Mink continues. "Someone who believes in climate change and takes it seriously for the benefit of all of us, including our children, so I urge you to resign before your scandals repel you." [19659026] End of the speech.

Pruitt gave another half-smile, not really happy this time, before the video was cut.

"I would have liked him to continue filming," said Mink. But her husband had noticed two men watching from an adjacent table, both with headphones, not eating. One of Pruitt's controversies that Mink did not mention is the millions of dollars that the public has spent for his personal safety.

"The two security guards were behind my husband," said Mink. "And I think he was jostling for us out of there."

Her husband was right to say that it was the real Pruitt, by the way. EPA officials confirmed that the confrontation had occurred, although the agency disputed Mink's account of what had happened after her husband had turned off his camera. , "Spokesman Lincoln Ferguson wrote in a statement." This is evident by listening to her comments and continuing to thank her, which is not shown in the video. "

Mink, however, stated that Pruitt did not utter a word during or after her speech

.In fact, she says, she never saw him again after she turned away from her table

She broke her promise to take her son out, and she came back to her own table. "I felt like I had to sit down," she said. When she had the toddler sit down and looked up, she said that Pruitt's table and the guards beside it were empty and that the four men were far from being in sight.

"He had just finished his meal and needed to get back to the EPA for a briefing, "wrote the spokesman for the agency. "His departure had nothing to do with the confrontation."

Mink does not believe it. She called Pruitt a coward and wrote that he had "fled the restaurant" when she posted the video on Facebook this afternoon – and that is how she tells the story. story in the non-stop news that she's been given since the video went viral. the interaction – from observation to draft to "resign" – had only taken a few minutes. By the end of Monday afternoon, Pruitt would be back in the news with even more accusations of ethical scandals.

Mink ended up eating her pancake, then took her family to see the White House.

Read more:

The Red Hen explains why she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave

This is what happens when your restaurant also calls it "Red" Hen & # 39;

An 8 year old boy tried to sell water for a trip to Disneyland. A white woman threatened to call the police

A transgender woman says that she was asked for an ID card to use the toilet, and then expelled her from the DC restaurant [19659042] (function (d, s, id) {var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName (s) [0]; if (d.getElementById (id)) returns; js = d.createElement (s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/ sdk.js # xfbml x3d1 x26version x3dv3.0"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore (js, fjs)}) (document, "script", "facebook-jssdk"); [ad_2]
Source link