Former GOP EPA chief: Trump administration is ‘trying to create confusion in science’

Christine Todd Whitman, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the George W. Bush administration, said Wednesday that the Trump administration is “trying to create confusion in science.”

Whitman told CNN that what worries her most about the administration’s environmental policy is the “erosion of trust in science.” {mosads}

“They are trying to create confusion in science by not allowing pure science. They are replacing people on the Science Advisory Board with people from industry,” Whitman said. 

“That’s what we’re seeing: this administration again and again talking about just the economics of an issue,” she added. “EPA is about protecting public health and the environment.”

Several former EPA administrators, including Christine Todd Whitman, had strong rebukes of the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy and science.

“The biggest thing long-term is this erosion of trust in science. They are trying to create confusion,” she says. pic.twitter.com/yYSp1uhmVY

— New Day (@NewDay) June 12, 2019

Four former EPA administrators, including Whitman, on Tuesday similarly denounced the agency’s direction under President Trump at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. 

“Today, as never before, the mission of EPA is being seriously undermined by the very people who have been entrusted with carrying that mission out,” she said Tuesday. 

Whitman has been a vocal critic of Trump.