'That might be your way to try to twist my words': Trump EPA head snaps at CNN host
Donald Trump's head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) got snippy with CNN's Kasie Hunt on Sunday morning when she tried to get a clarification from him.
During his appearance on "State of the Union," Lee Zeldin, a former GOP lawmaker who failed in his bid to become governor of New York, was pressed by Hunt who asked him about the policy changes he is making since taking over.
"The Supreme Court ruled in overturning the Chevron doctrine in West Virginia versus EPA, Michigan versus EPA, that agencies like the EPA can't just use vague language in statute and try to make it be whatever we want it to be," he told the host. "The major policy doctrine also says that when you're going to reach something like an endangerment finding and then have trillions of dollars of regulation, that's something that should be decided by our elected members of Congress and passing statute."
Saying previous officials made "a lot of mental leaps," he added, "They say carbon dioxide when mixed with a whole bunch of other, well, mixed gases, in some cases not even admitted for mobile sources, they say that that contributes to global climate change, Doesn't say causes, contributes how much? They don't say, but it's north of zero –– not much more than zero. "
"So you're sounding pretty skeptical of this overall scientific consensus that these greenhouse gas emissions are the overwhelming man-made climate change driver," Hunt asked.
"That might be your way to try to twist my words," the Republican fired back. "But what I'm saying is that we get our power at EPA from what the law states and the Supreme Court in recent cases have been very clear."
"So what I was just describing, with all the mental leaps used in the 2009 endangerment finding, Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, doesn't allow all of these different mental leaps as the Supreme Court made clear in recent years," Zeldin insisted. "So I'm not going to get creative with the law. We're going to read the plain language and if Section 202 of the Clean Air Act gets amended by Congress, then we'll follow that new law."
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