Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), a frequent critic of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt, applauded the embattled administrator’s resignation on Thursday.
“It’s about time,” Schwarzenegger tweeted. “He will go down in history books the worst EPA Administrator we’ve ever had.”
President Trump announced on Thursday that he had accepted Pruitt’s resignation following months of ethics scandals and controversies.
Schwarzenegger often tore into Pruitt’s leadership at the EPA. In May, he wrote that Pruitt could not be taken seriously, dubbing the then-embattled administrator “the worst Environmental secretary that we have ever had.”
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The former governor, an environmental activist, previously had criticized Pruitt for his ties to oil and gas companies. Earlier this year, Schwarzenegger announced that he would had plans to sue oil companies, alleging that they are “knowingly killing people all over the world.”
California, long a front-runner among states on environmental issues, had run up against Pruitt and the Trump administration on numerous occasions for the former EPA head’s rollback of several Obama-era environmental protections.
State officials, now led by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), are suing the Trump administration for its decision to lower standards for car tailpipe emissions.