 All right. Okay, so let's say Trump magically gets impeached. We have cheering in the streets, ding-dong the witch is dead, praise the constitution, praise our system, praise our founding fathers, praise our mainstream media, they did their job. Aren't we great? Nobody's above the law. Good for us. The system works. No, the system works for the richest one percent. While this clown show was going on in the Justice Department, while this celebration of our rule of law dominates the news cycle. Underneath it all, the plutocrats who installed Donald Trump are carrying on doing serious damage to our planet, killing our planet, displacing millions of third world people due to drought, famine and flooding, all in the name of profits, all in the name of some kind of conservative Christianity hijacked by a twisted book of revelations death cult whose disciples include Betsy DeVoe or DeVos are, she's our uneducated secretary of education. Put an idiot in charge and the profits come pouring in. There's actually an idiot even bigger than Donald Trump, Rick Perry. He's the head of the Department of Energy. Alex Koch is an independent investigative journalist. You can follow him on Twitter at Alex Koch or go to his website, AlexKoch.com. That's K-O-T-C-H and he had a magnificent piece in alternate yesterday. He did some heavy lifting. It's called Rick Perry's early days as energy secretary, have been a bonanza for corporations and the Koch brothers. Welcome, Alex Koch. Thanks so much for having me. Well, thank you for doing this. You do heavy lifting. It's a lot of fun to watch the soap opera that's going on inside the Justice Department and Congress, will he or will he not be impeached? And it's important, but underneath it all, the people who installed Donald Trump, much like the people who installed George W. Bush, are getting exactly what they want. Right, yeah. I mean, it's pretty astounding how much special interests have infiltrated the White House and the agencies, especially those connected to Charles and David Koch, who are the billionaire industrialists who operate many businesses under the kind of banner of Koch Industries, including fossil fuel, oil, and gas refining businesses. I've definitely found some Koch links in the Department of Energy as Perry, you know, once Perry was confirmed and they're beginning to staff the agency. Right. Would you say that the energy department is an analog for the Trump White House in that somebody wanted an idiot in the Oval Office? Somebody wanted an idiot in the Department of Energy. Yeah, I mean, you know, look, Rick Perry distinguished himself in 2012 during the Republican presidential primary where he said famously at a debate, a televised debate against his opponents, that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies. And when he got to the third one, he forgot the name of it. And then we found out later that it was actually the Department of Energy he wanted to eliminate. I actually think based on just doing some reading that he didn't realize what the department does. So, you know, when he was nominated by Trump, it was pretty surprising considering this is a guy he wanted to end the agency, surprising on one hand and more kind of telling on the other of Trump's policy preferences. It sounds like once Perry kind of realized, oh, it's not totally about domestic energy. It's also about nuclear and protecting the nuclear arsenal that the United States has. I think he got more interested in it. But regardless, yeah, I don't think he's the brightest bulb on the tree. He went before his confirmation hearings and he issued a statement apologizing for wanting to eliminate the Department of Energy because, as you just said, I didn't know what it did. Here's a guy who was who wanted to be president even though he didn't know what the Department of Energy did. He had no problem calling for its elimination. Then he goes before his confirmation hearings and basically says, I'm an idiot. I mean, I'm even a bigger idiot than you can imagine. And they confirmed him. Now, I know you're an investigative journalist and you're a PhD and you deal with credible sources, not lunatics, not angry people like me. So, you cannot talk the way I do. But I can talk the way I do. I don't want to paint you in a corner and put you in an uncomfortable position before we get to the meat of your story. There is virtue in the Republican Party. There is virtue to finding an idiot and putting him in charge. And then somebody else is running the show. And that's kind of what you're implying in your story. Was Rick Perry, wasn't he an all of the above energy guy before he became head of the Department of Energy? Yeah, I do think that's kind of his general philosophy. I'd say he's an all of the above energy guy with kind of a preference towards fossil fuels. As governor of Texas for 14 years, he accepted lots of campaign donations, millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry, coal, oil, and gas. He certainly has a lot of friends in that industry. But he also oversaw an expansion of wind energy in Texas, a pretty major one. It was begun actually by George W. Bush. But Perry didn't halt it. He kept it going. And they have a pretty nice wind energy portfolio down there, as well as a renewable portfolio standard that he signed. So he has done some things to advance clean energy. But I would definitely say that in general, he certainly favors the fossil fuels and their kind of power and political influence. When he got to the Department of Energy 90 days ago, who has he been hiring? Has he been hiring people who are in favor of wind and solar? No. And it's hard to know some of the lower level hires. They're harder to, they don't really announce them, they're harder to find out. But some of the more high-profile hires are pretty troubling for anyone who wants the earth to continue to be a safe place to live and to support life forms. So I'll first talk about Travis Fisher. He was maybe a researcher and columnist at a think tank called the Institute for Energy Research. And that's funded by wealthy conservatives, including the Koch brothers. It was basically a sort of fossil fuel energy shop. And so he wrote columns opposing renewable energy and defending fossil fuels when he was there. Now he's a staffer at the Department of Energy. And actually, Rick Perry tasked him with overseeing a study that Perry just requested on whether clean energy programs are hindering coal and nuclear programs. In other words, it appears to be an effort to undermine renewable programs by sort of claiming that they are costing the traditional fossil fuel industry industry. Excuse me for one second. That's just a blatant patronage, isn't it? I mean, the only way they're costing them is they're more desirable to the consumer. How else would they be a cost to fossil fuels? Yeah. And you know, a lot of the number of Democratic senators wrote a letter to Perry, I believe, and it was it was talking about their how their disapproval of this. I mean, they're saying it doesn't take a scientist to to realize that the reason, you know, oil prices are low is because of all the natural gas production. There's a glut of natural gas in this country, which by the way, you know, just just the mining of itself is a huge greenhouse gas contributor with the methane emissions, which is often, you know, overseeing when people claim that gas is cleaner than oil. But the point is, you know, these these are some kind of truth telling senators who are saying, look, I mean, you're clearly trying to, you know, provide the wrong answer to an easy question because you want to favor the traditional fossil fuel industry. Are we finding out that there are more jobs right now in solar than there are in coal? I believe so. I don't know for a fact, but I'm pretty sure I read that recently. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. You would think then that that would be the direction we would be moving since you want to protect the people with the most jobs. And it seems to be in solar and wind, not coal, but coal tends to be white men in blackface with dirty hands. And there's something rugged about that. It's more evocative of an America that we lost. And that's why the Republicans seem to want it. Plus the fossil fuel industry controls the Republican Party. Who is Brian McCormick? Right. He's the chief of staff. So he has a lot of control over things over there in the Department of Energy. He is a former vice president of political and external affairs at the Edison Electric Institute. This is a trade group for big utility companies. It's very anti-solar energy, for example. And it gets contributions from usual suspects on the right. Actually, when he was there, he was part of the Institute's anti-solar campaign. They've been trying to get rid of residential solar, rooftop solar options for a while now, because that threatens the large energy corporations who maintain the grids and supply energy through non-manuable sources, generally, to consumers. So they see that as a threat. So this trade group has been fighting that at the state level in many states, trying to pass laws that basically will put those programs out of business, undue taxes and things on the residents. So now that he's the chief of staff, he'll be kind of governing a lot of what's going on there. He can help shape the energy solar policy when he's there. I mean, he's clearly someone with a record of opposing solar energy in favor of oil and gas and coal. Is it fair to say that he's probably more influential over energy than Rick Perry is? I don't actually know the answer to that question, but I think it's just based on a lot of other administrations, other agencies. I mean, chiefs of staff generally, I think it depends on who's leading it. But chiefs of staff often, they do deal with a lot of duties over there. So I imagine, I certainly, in my research, I found an article that said that he will most likely help shape the solar policy. Do you think that they will have hobbled clean energy? Maybe about a third of what they do or a fraction of what they do, but still somewhat substantial, is kind of overseeing energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. They give out grants, they put out standards and things like that. They have an office. It's called the Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Now, the new head of that is going to be a guy named Dan Simmons, who is vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research. So as I described earlier, they are very opposed to renewable energy in general. So that's a very bad sign. But on the other hand, it's kind of interesting. But currently, foreign energy has been touting its energy efficiency and renewable programs actually on social media, as well as its own blog, and actually touting the increased renewable energy jobs that have been appearing. So it's kind of mixed messages. On the one hand, you've got kind of the social media strategy and this blogging strategy that hasn't really changed under Perry yet. But now the guy is going to lead that agency as an opponent of renewables. So I don't think the future looks terribly good. Yeah. What is Energy Star? Energy Star is one program. It puts out kind of certifications, I guess, for energy efficiency for businesses and for buildings, things like that. It's been very successful, reportedly. And it's something that the Department of Energy has generally been pretty proud of. And so they're actually still promoting it, while Trump wants to get rid of it entirely. Trump's put out a, but there was a budget blueprint and now I think he's kind of they're leaking their actual budget proposal. So I mean, Trump, the Trump administration wants to cut enormous amounts from that program, the Energy Star, but also just a lot of other programs within the office of efficiency and renewables. So we'll see if that gets through Congress next through the end of this year, because Congress recently passed a budget that funds the agency and funds for the government until the end of 2017, which didn't have major cuts to the Department of Energy. But we could see some bigger ones going into next year. We have Pruitt over at the EPA, who just, as Attorney General, I believe in Oklahoma, would just copy and paste briefings from Alec or the coal industry. Yeah, he did that with a Devon Energy request. He literally did that. He copied and pasted from the lobbyist. Perry, you say went overseas and refused to commit to President Obama's big climate change agreement, the Paris Agreement from 2015. What does that mean? Yeah, so what he did was he went over there in April for a G7 summit in Italy, and the other six G7 nations signed an agreement that just kind of reaffirmed their commitment to the 2015 Paris International Climate Agreement. But Rick Perry, he didn't outright refuse, but he said we're still in the evaluation phase, and so we don't know if we'd like to continue to support this. Trump has said very openly that he wants the United States to leave the Paris Climate Agreement. And because of our country's stature, if we leave it, it's basically, as far as I understand, it's going to be hauled, if not basically over, that you can't have an international climate agreement without the United States. So that's not looking good either for climate. I'm reading today about the Antarctic ice sheets peeling off. Is it called calving? Calving into the ocean? The clock is ticking. I know this is an unfair question. You're an investigative journalist, but you can't get into these minds of Rex Tillerson, former head of Exxon, who's now over at state. Don't they know what's going on? How do they sleep at night? I ask myself this question all the time. And I mean, I don't think I know. I don't think I have an answer to this. But I do. I mean, I think what you and I and many people who follow politics know quite well is that money and power really tends to be the driver of policy. It's not very often these days that you have policy that actually is just purely good for the public. And there's no political interest involved. And there's no money involved. Unfortunately, we have this system in America where we have a lot of corporations and their executives who are heavily involved in election and electoral politics. They're able to give enormous sums of money towards campaigns or towards outside groups that spend in campaigns. And they're able to lobby in millions of millions of dollars every year, lobby these Congresspeople, many of whom they probably helped put in office. So you've got, there's not a ton of incentive for, you know, for, for example, for Republicans in the House or the Senate right now to go against sort of the preferences of fossil fuel companies unless they appeal to, you know, unless they believe in climate science and they actually appeal to logic that, you know, we don't have a lot of time. We're already maybe past the point of reversal for that polar cap to fully disintegrate over the next, you know, decades or so. When you watch the news and you read the paper where they're following the clown show in the Justice Department, we all agree. I'm not asking for your opinion, but most of us agree Trump's got to go. But even if they get rid of them, this stuff is still going to be going on. And it's, and more of it's going to go on because Trump is such a distraction. Right. And that's, yeah, I mean, exactly that. I think this story might that, you know, what we put out today at alternate might get kind of buried because there's every day at 5 p.m. at Eastern time, it seems like there is a huge bombshell that drops and there might be another one at 8 p.m. about, you know, the Trump Russia investigation. So, yeah, I mean, they can under behind the scenes almost they're doing probably doing a lot of this work now. You know, who knows if Trump gets actually gets impeached, which I remain skeptical about just because of the, you know, the rhetoric is one thing that actions are another thing for people in Congress. But say he does get impeached. I mean, I don't know how many other top officials are going to have to leave technically probably not many, although I do think a lot of the transition team, including Pence could be deeply involved in this and might be implicated in a big way. So I'm waiting, you know, I'm waiting to hear about Pence that he might be kind of the last person to fall from this. But the point is, you know, there, I don't know if, you know, Scott Pruitt's going to, I mean, he'll probably still lead the EPA. Perry probably won't, won't have to leave the Department of Energy, things like this. So they're going to continue doing what they want to do. And unless people in Congress find the goodwill to actually address this kind of catastrophe that's happening to our planet, you know, nothing's going to change until people, you know, they get out of office. A catastrophe to our planet, a catastrophe to our drinking water, to our farm workers, the pesticides, it is pretty incredible. If you were a Koch brother, you're a Koch brother. If you take the tea out of Koch and you were a Koch brother, what would you be thinking right now about the impeachment? Would you be scared that we're going to lose our guy, or would this be something that kind of pleases you? Well, the thing is, I mean, first of all, they're going to be powerful long beyond Trump, whether he's impeached or not, and removed from office or not, because they have a political network that rivals the entire Republican Party. And as you can see from the healthcare negotiations, I mean, the Freedom Caucus, which is generally the people that the Kochs favor the most, was very powerful and kind of got their way to some degree with their horrible healthcare bill, which is not going to pass the Senate in my estimation. But yeah, I mean, the Kochs, first of all, Mike Pence is one of the Koch's favorite politicians. I mean, they put a lot of money into his congressional and gubernatorial campaigns. He is a 100% free market guy just like they want. So they actually, I think early in the kind of presidential field before everyone had announced they were running for the 2016, I think they were hoping that Pence would be one of the presidential candidates. But so when they got him an SVP, I think they were very lucky. And if he becomes president, I think they'll be much happier than if Trump is president. I mean, the Kochs haven't overtly supported Trump, although they did run ads, their nonprofit groups ran ads against Democratic senators in swing states that were very critical of Hillary Clinton. So I think that must have helped to some degree help Trump's chances. Before you go, I just want to bring it back to Rick Perry. You write that he was a board member of the Energy Transfer Partners. Who are they? And here's a story that's being buried. Who are they? Yeah, they're they're the co-owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which, you know, many water protectors and Native Americans and allies protested against for months last year and successfully got it delayed. But once Trump got in office in January, it was one of the first things he did, I believe, was to give the green light to that pipeline, which is going directly through native lands. Potential leaks could be catastrophic to to the people living in those areas. And it's it's transporting really dirty, the dirtiest tar sand oil you can find through the entire country down to, I think, a refinery on the Gulf Coast. So the fact that Rick Perry was until recently a board member of that company might be perhaps the best signal we've got as to what its priorities are. And that was the big story. And it's now it's just going to happen, right? And nothing can be done about it. I that I think so. I mean, so far, I mean, who knows what's going to happen if Trump gets impeached. But I mean, so far, I think I think once the president okays it, it's going to happen. Energy Transfer Partners is a big company. They have a lot of political influence. Kelsey Warren is their CEO. He's a big independent donor as well. I mean, he's a conservative donor. But as by himself and not with this company, he's very well known as giving millions of dollars to super PACs and things like that. So yeah, I think it's probably going to happen. And it's, you know, mark my words, there will be some accident or, you know, some spill, and it's going to be bad. I'm getting I'm getting a call here. Our time is up. The Excel pipeline, what's happening with that? I mean, Trump also greenlit that one. So, you know, I think a lot of it's already built. So I believe they're going to continue and finish it. And that'll also, you know, that does a similar thing to the access pipeline. So it's going to be, you know, a couple pretty dangerous pipelines going through our entire country. And we have as head of the State Department, Rex Tillerson, who ran Exxon, and these kind of pipelines, I didn't know this until Obama was president, you can't build a pipeline unless it's approved by the State Department is the purview of the State Department to determine whether or not the Keystone pipeline will will be good for the environment or not and good for international relations because they go through various countries. Is that why is that one of the reasons Trump put Rex Tillerson or I call him Rex Spillerson as the head of state because he knew that Rex Tillerson would approve all these pipelines. That's probably about, yeah. I mean, I'm sure that's back into the decision. I mean, Trump, I Trump had a lot of advising from that very conservative heritage foundation. And they put out actually a blueprint budget proposal for for Paris agency. And basically, I mean, I read through the whole thing, there wasn't a solar energy when renewable energy was not mentioned once. I mean, it was completely fossil fuel energy specific. So they wanted to zero out any funding for renewables. So the point is they were heavily involved in the transition team and picking nominees and certainly Rex Tillerson, in my estimation, would greenlight both of these very happily. I mean, he literally worked 40 years at Exxon. He was CEO for 11 of those years until becoming Secretary of State. So I think it's pretty obvious where his interests lie. And they're headquartered in Texas. Yeah. Yeah, Exxonmobil's headquartered in Texas, along with a couple other major oil companies, Canoko Phillips and Valero Energy. Texas is known as really the oil state and definitely the natural gas state. And so, you know, Perry, I would imagine has a good relationship with with Tillerson. I know that the Rockefeller family divested themselves of Exxonmobil stock for reasons we don't need to go into right now. But it involves climate change. I did believe that Rex Tillerson and Exxon getting honest, they did have a minor come to Jesus moment about climate change. Didn't they acknowledge that it is man made? I think probably recently, I don't know, I'm guessing, I don't know for a fact, but I'm guessing it was probably after Inside Climate News broke the major store that they had known about climate change since the 70s and covered it up. So whether or not it was before or after, I don't know. But, you know, clearly after that, they have to say something publicly about it. They can't, they can't deny it too much longer. But it doesn't mean they're really going to change their practice as much. Right. So in conclusion, while we're paying attention to the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, the Keystone Pipeline is going through. The Dakota Access Pipeline is going through. They are denuding the energy department and the EPA of all or most or a lot of our environmental protections. Are the state attorney generals pursuing their lawsuit against Exxonmobil? Where is that? That's an unfair question to ask you. That's not why I called. Yeah, actually, that was one of the things that Pruitt copied and pasted when he was Attorney General of Oklahoma. He was... Yeah, I mean, well, what I do know is that if you're referring to the suit again, well, one of the many suits against the EPA that Scott Pruitt and many other Attorney General were part of, I remember recently reading that Pruitt would not, he would not recuse himself from it. He's staying in the lawsuit, suing his own agency now. It's pretty astounding. Well, thank you for your time. Alex Koch, that's KOTCH, writes for Alternate. He's an investigative journalist. You can follow him over at Twitter. It's at Alex Koch or go to AlexKoch.com. Thank you for your important work. Thank you for reminding us of what's really happening, but there are more important things going on than the shiny object of Trump's supposed impeachment. Thank you, Alex. Well, thank you very much for having me. That was great.