This is how you get bills passed.
Right here, bills passed.
Say yes
say yes
say yes.
That’s Ryan Zinke.
Former Navy Seal Commander and current Secretary of the Interior.
With Zinke at the helm, the Department of the Interior plans to get rid of hundreds of thousands
of acres of national parks and monuments.
Raised in the small town of Whitefish, Montana, Zinke was a star athlete in high school.
Senior year in football, won the state championship
...
America.
Which got him a football scholarship from Pac-12 powerhouse, the Oregon Ducks.
He graduated in 1984.
One year later, hung up his helmet and pads and signed up to be a NAVY Seal.
Zinke was in the NAVY for 23 years, eventually moving to SEAL team six
where he was a ground force commander and task force commander.
He also commanded something else:
Travel Fraud.
He expensed his travels home to Montana to renovate the home he was planning to retire in—
expensing those personal costs to the US government and calling it "work."
After he was caught and warned,
he continued submitting his travel expenses to the Navy.
He wasn’t allowed back in SEAL Team Six,
but was reportedly allowed to stay in the Navy because punishment may have hurt his family.
But don’t worry, the taxpayer got their money back: Zinke reimbursed the government $211.
[Cash register noise]
According to his Navy records, Zinke’s "declining performance"
was due to his "lapse in judgment in executing his duties on two occasions”
And he’s brought that declining performance to the White House:
As Interior Secretary, Zinke allegedly took a $12,000 private chartered jet
owned by oil and gas executives from Las Vegas to the same place in Montana,
and again, charged it to the taxpayer.
Before we get started, I’d just like to address, in the words of General Shwarzkopf,
a little BS on travel.
And there’s more than one scandal in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana.
There’s one that overshadows them all:
For one: famous white supremacist Richard Spencer calls the town of 7,000 people home.
And then there’s Whitefish Energy.
An energy company that somehow got a 300 million dollar contract to restore power to Puerto Rico,
despite having only 2 employees, and only existing for 2 years.
Zinke denied having any part in getting them the contract, but Zinke’s son had worked for Whitefish before,
and Zinke has previously helped the company get contracts.
But there’s one thing Zinke is unquestionably doing:
shrinking the monuments and national parks he is supposed to be bettering.
And I could tell you, you can hear it from my lips: we will not sell or transfer public land.
Just because Zinke claims he wants to keep public lands in public hands
doesn’t mean he won’t allow megacorporations to drill holes in them.
Zinke is a huge friend of the energy industry,
and has pushed to open public land for energy development.
The war on coal I believe is real.
He was tasked by Trump in April to analyze 27 national treasures,
like rivers, canyons and an array of architectural sites.
On the chopping block is Utah’s Bears Ears, a 1.3 million acres of public land.
Zinke plans to cut that down to 160,000.
In an effort to restore trust, Zinke went to Utah monuments on a four day “listening tour,”
but he really didn’t listen.
When urged by a woman to meet with local leaders, Zinke fired back:
Zinke, are you going to visit with the—
Be nice.
I’m so nice.
Be nice.
Oh, okay—
Don’t be rude, thank you.
The President has since reversed Obama’s decision to preserve Bears Ears
as a national monument and plans to reduce it in size by 85%.
And this is just the start of the shrinkage.