REALITY CHECK: Trump & His Billionaire GOP Megadonor Desperately Trying to Greenwash Gardner’s Toxic Environmental Record
Trump: “Cory Gardner’s doing a fantastic job… What he’s does with us for the environment in Colorado has been incredible”
FACT: Gardner & Trump have rolled back at least 100 protections for clean air and water, polluted Colorado’s environment & failed to protect public lands
Denver, CO - President Trump and another of his billionaire GOP megadonors are desperately trying to greenwash Senator Cory Gardner’s toxic environmental record that earned him a failing 11% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters and a spot on their notorious “Dirty Dozen” list. After Gardner played a “key role” pushing through the GOP tax scam that save the wealthiest like GOP megadonor Joe Ricketts billions of dollars, Ricketts is returning the favor with his shady Super PAC airing a deceptive new greenwashing ad to boost Gardner’s losing campaign with a new nearly million dollar ad buy.
Simultaneously, Trump also tried to boost Gardner’s weak environmental credentials yesterday on a campaign call with QAnon conspiracy theory believer Lauren Boebert, saying “Cory Gardner’s doing a fantastic job” on the environment — which only makes sense if you’re Trump and think it’s “fantastic” to reverse a hundred protections for clean air and water.
“President Trump and billionaire-backed big money groups are working overtime to deceive voters and greenwash Senator Gardner’s trash environmental record of selling out our public lands and exacerbating climate change,” said Colorado Democratic Party spokesperson Eli Rosen. “Coloradans know that Senator Gardner’s record certainly isn’t ‘green,’ but the new cash his special interest billionaire allies are spending in a last-ditch attempt to save him is.”
Ricketts — who is one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, with a Super PAC and “one of the largest dark money organizations in the nation” to boost the president — and his family’s dark money group spent $15 million to support the GOP tax scam that Gardner played a crucial role in passing and it paid its dividends: the wealthiest like Ricketts save billions in dollars from the GOP tax bill. Now, Ricketts is throwing back some of his savings to his hard-working foot soldiers like Gardner with deceptive TV ads.
Here are the facts that Gardner’s big money Super PAC allies leave out:
GARDNER SOLD OUT COLORADO’S PUBLIC LANDS
- A rubber stamp for Trump’s toxic environmental agenda, Gardner has a failing 11% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters and a spot on their notorious “Dirty Dozen” list of most anti-environmental lawmakers.
- Gardner refuses to support the bipartisan House-passed CORE Act, a decade-in-the-making collaborative wilderness bill to protect 400,000 acres of public land. Gardner is stonewalling the bill and even decried the legislation as “a partisan, political tool,” despite widespread grassroots support.
- Gardner voted to virtually eliminate funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and supported Trump’s attempt to cut $16 million from the public lands program in 2018.
- Gardner refused to speak out against Trump’s anti-public lands head of the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, despite his support for selling off public lands and his long history of climate science denial and xenophobia and even after a judge ruled Pendley was illegally running the agency without Senate confirmation.
- Gardner voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for the first time ever.
- Gardner pro-polluter votes include letting coal mines off the hook for stream pollution and to repeal methane emissions limits modeled after Colorado’s own — that John Hickenlooper spearheaded.
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