AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!
I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to Colorado, where Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was confronted
Friday while he spoke in rural Steamboat Springs at the Freedom Conference, which has featured
conservative thought leaders like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Fox News host Laura
Ingraham.
Just as Zinke began his address, Jesse Brucato stood up and raised a sign that read “Corruption
Cream Ale.”
He asked Zinke a series of questions before fellow diners grabbed him from behind and
removed him from the room.
UNKNOWN: What’s easier, being a former Seal Team 6 commander or Department of Interior
secretary?
SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR RYAN ZINKE: Actually, Seal was a better job.
[laughter]
SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR RYAN ZINKE: As a Seal, when people shot at you, I could shoot
back.
[laughter]
SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR RYAN ZINKE: [inaudible].
I’m honored to be in the president’s Cabinet.
But I can tell you, with this president, you never sit.
But Interior is—it’s 12 time zones.
We stretch from the Virgin Islands all the way to Palau.
JESSE BRUCATO: Hey, Secretary Zinke!
Why do you care more about breweries, your own personal brewery, than our public lands?
UNKNOWN: Sit down!
JESSE BRUCATO: Don’t touch me!
UNKNOWN: Sit down.
Sit down.
JESSE BRUCATO: About our public lands.
It is rude that you care more about our—
UNKNOWN: Sit down.
JESSE BRUCATO: —fossil fuel buddies than our public lands.
UNKNOWN: Sit down.
UNKNOWN: Everybody has the right to talk.
Shut the fuck up and go away.
JESSE BRUCATO: Yeah.
Let’s go.
Take me out.
I’m not fighting.
AMY GOODMAN: After Jesse Brucato was taken out by fellow diners, Zinke continued his
speech focused on the management of public lands, but it was not long before Zinke was
interrupted again, this time by Sallie Holmes, who had more questions for the interior secretary.
SALLIE HOLMES: Secretary Zinke, why won’t you acknowledge that climate change is causing
and accelerating wildfires, even in Routt County?
CROWD: [boos and crosstalk]
UNKNOWN: Totally not true!
SALLIE HOLMES: Why are you cutting the DOI budget for wildfires?
UNKNOWN: [Inaudible]
SALLIE HOLMES: Our communities are suffering because you will not acknowledge climate change!
AMY GOODMAN: This is how Secretary Zinke responded to Sallie Holmes after she asked why he won’t
acknowledge that climate change is causing and accelerating wildfires.
SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR RYAN ZINKE: You know what?
You haven’t served and you don’t understand what energy is.
I would like to see your child have to fight for energy.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary Zinke served 23 years as a Navy SEAL and represented Montana as
a congressmember, but since he became interior secretary, Zinke has emerged as one of the
most ethically challenged members of President Trump’s Cabinet.
Compared to disgraced former EPA Director Scott Pruitt, who faced a record 16 federal
investigations into alleged misconduct before he was forced to resign, Zinke has faced 14
federal investigations into his behavior as secretary.
We’ll talk more about the latest allegations he faces soon, but first, we go directly to
Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where we are joined by the two people you just heard interrupting
Zinke.
That’s Sallie Holmes and Jesse Brucato, both residents of Steam Boat Springs who describe
themselves as concerned citizens.
Holmes a graduate of Colorado Mountain College with a degree in sustainability studies, Jesse
Brucato an avid rafting enthusiast.
Welcome both of you to Democracy Now!
Sallie, let’s begin with you.
Talk about your message, how you got into this event, what the event was, and your assessment
of Zinke’s response.
SALLIE HOLMES: I got into the event by buying a ticket.
Both Jesse and I decided that we needed to be a little more assertive.
If you’re going to come to Steamboat and only speak to wealthy donors and wealthy citizens,
then we decided that we needed a seat at the table as well.
His response to me was incredibly angry and intense.
I think I really threw him off guard.
He didn’t stay on my topic obviously.
He was talking about energy at the time.
But he immediately went to that I haven’t served in the military, I don’t know anything
about energy and my child is going to have to fight for a war.
And the reason we were there is to ask a question—you can’t be a responsible land manager unless
you acknowledge the issues at hand, which include climate change and listening to your
stakeholders.
AMY GOODMAN: Your own county has been fighting wildfires, Sally?
SALLIE HOLMES: Yes, we have a fire burning to the east of Steamboat that is only about
five percent contained right now, and the smoke has been billowing into the valley for
the past couple weeks, definitely diminishing air quality.
We already have a stage one fire ban here as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Jesse Brucato, talk about your concerns, what you raised with him.
Explain the sign you were holding.
JESSE BRUCATO: So the sign I held up said “Corruption Cream Ale” on it, and basically
the message that I wanted to get out with that is that Zinke is clearly a corrupt politician,
using private meetings with Halliburton to get something he has always wanted, a brewery,
instead of focusing on protecting our public lands, which is something I deeply care about.
I didn’t really think that you should be subject to personal gains through just having
a position of power in office.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Ben Lefebvre into this conversation, who has been doing
a series of exposés in Politico around the interior secretary.
And on this issue of a brewery in Whitefish, Montana, his hometown, can you explain what
it is that Jesse was so concerned about?
Explain with this brewery is, what the connection is to Halliburton and what it has to do with
the issue of public lands, Ben.
BEN LEFEBVRE: A group of developers in Whitefish, Montana, including the Halliburton chairman
and until recently the CEO Dave Lesar, are bankrolling a proposed development that would
include a microbrewery that is—the development would be adjacent to a park that the Zinkes
own, that Ryan Zinke and his family run through a foundation they set up about a decade ago.
The worries are that through a land deal that the foundation is offering with the developers,
including Lesar, the Zinkes may have a chance at operating a microbrewery that’s planned
for the development.
They had a meeting—Dave Lesar and Ryan Zinke—in the Interior Department’s headquarters in
Zinke’s office, where they discussed the development.
Zinke would say that they spent 90 minutes talking about the Interior’s history, but
then after the meeting at the headquarters, they went out to dinner.
Zinke took him for a private tour of the Lincoln Memorial.
So it really raises questions of conflict of interest.
AMY GOODMAN: And this land that the foundation got—the foundation was set up to serve veterans.
Is that right?
BEN LEFEBVRE: Yeah.
The land was given to the Zinkes through the BNSF railroad about a decade ago.
The land was supposed to be used to build a park to honor veterans.
The Zinkes have said they would look into doing educational programs for kids with this
foundation, but having visited there twice, there’s nothing really there.
It is just a bunch of weeds and grass.
There is a rail line, like one of the major rail lines going right adjacent to the park.
About 40 trains a day go by.
The Zinkes have said they would do a bandshell there for summer concerts.
Neighbors have said that’s not a great idea, when you’ve got 40 rumbling trains per day
going through.
So there’s a question of what their plans are for this land.
There is a retention pond there that eats up most of the available space.
I think the latest I have heard is Secretary Zinke’s wife saying it’s a great dog run.
But it’s a vacant lot.
Any vacant lot, I would imagine, would be a great dog run.
AMY GOODMAN: And the business Halliburton has before the Secretary of Interior, or the
Interior Department?
BEN LEFEBVRE: Halliburton is one of the biggest frackers in the world.
Anything they do on public land is going to be regulated by Interior.
So we have seen, for instance, Interior trying to roll back or they actually have rolled
back the fracking rule that the Obama administration put in place.
That would save service companies like Halliburton quite a bit of money.
The Interior is still trying to roll back a rule the Obama administration put in place
that would have cut down the methane emissions from pipelines and oil rigs on private lands.
And the Interior Department is also now considering rolling back or in the process of rolling
back, safety rules for offshore drilling rigs, which again, would be another thing that service
companies such as Halliburton would save money from not having to adhere to stricter regulations.
AMY GOODMAN: So this brewery that the Zinkes own is in—their business partner is the
CEO of Halliburton?
BEN LEFEBVRE: Right.
They don’t own the brewery yet.
I mean, they don’t—the brewery has been proposed for the land, and Zinke has been
trying to get a brewery off the ground since 2012.
He first proposed it then, along with a bed-and-breakfast for the town, but he has been pursuing it
pretty much nonstop since then.
Even as a U.S. congressman in Montana a few years ago, he was sitting on a planning board
committee with the Whitefish City Council and attending meetings to talk about his microbrewery
idea.
Those plans got shot down because residents kind of protested, saying, “This is not
something we want in our residential neighborhood.”
But with this planned microbrewery that is—when you look at the development maps, it’s marked
off as a microbrewery—this raises questions of, is the Halliburton chairman bankrolling
a project that the Zinkes would then be in charge of?
Or who knows what Halliburton gets out of this, but if you’re the head of the Interior
Department, you have things to offer, so it does raise at least the appearance of conflict
of interest.
AMY GOODMAN: Sallie Holmes, can you respond to what Interior Secretary Zinke said about
fighting wars for oil?
SALLIE HOLMES: I think that he just basically removed the smokescreen about fighting wars
for democracy and freedom and admitted that they are for oil, and I think that it’s
extremely irresponsible for him to not only say that, but for him to admit that they’re
not looking at any type of alternatives.
There are other ways, renewable energy obviously, but we don’t need to be sending more Americans,
more of our family members and friends across the world to fight for energy when we have
the scientific technology to change that here.
AMY GOODMAN: As more than 100 fires rage in the western United States, a number of them
in Colorado, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wrote an op-ed last week in USA Today about
forest management on public lands, saying, “Radical environmentalists would have you
believe forest management means clear cutting forests and national parks.
But their rhetoric could not be further from the truth.
They make outdated and unscientific arguments, void of facts, because they cannot defend
the merits of their policy preferences year after year as our forests and homes burn to
the ground,” Zinke wrote.
His op-ed came out after confusion about President Donald Trump’s claim in a tweet that California’s
water, which could be used for firefighting, was instead being diverted into the Pacific
Ocean, which experts criticized completely and debunked.
Your response, Sally?
SALLIE HOLMES: I think that regardless of what he thinks about environmentalists or
the left or anything like that, this is a political spectrum spanning issue.
The majority of Americans care about our public lands, and I think we really only want a seat
at the table, and a responsible land manager who is not going to make the enemy out of
anybody and is going to listen to A, the scientific community, and B, the citizens as well.
AMY GOODMAN: And who took you out, Sallie Holmes?
Was it the diners you were around, or was it security?
Who forced you out?
SALLIE HOLMES: It was actually an attendee who got up from his seat and came over and
grabbed me around the neck and brought me back to the door to the exit, where I was
met by security.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you call yourself a protester, Jesse Brucato?
JESSE BRUCATO: I wouldn’t say I am particularly a political activist, but when I heard Zinke
was coming through town, I figured somebody had to do something.
It was a good opportunity to kind of put my money where my mouth is and stand up for what
I believe in.
AMY GOODMAN: I went to thank you both for joining us, Sallie Holmes and Jesse Brucato.
They both engaged in this first-time direct action, standing up at a dinner for Interior
Secretary Zinke in Steamboat Springs.
Ben Lefebvre, I would like to ask you to stay with us.
After break, we will also be joined by a former Interior Department employee for years who
ultimately left under the Trump Administration.
Stay with us.