The Donald Trump who stayed on the teleprompter Tuesday night and sounded almost normal claimed he would work with both parties "to promote clean air and clear water."
But pay attention to what he does, not what he says.
Just hours before his entreaty to Congress, he signed an executive order instructing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to begin the process of gutting EPA clean water rules.
Later in his speech, Trump bragged about his efforts to push more coal and oil into the market - fossil fuels which will make the air and water dirtier and degrade the earth's climate further.
This is a scary premise when you look at the U.S. Geological Survey maps showing how early spring has arrived in each state this year. The mapping provides a snapshot of index-based plant events, like leaves appearing on trees and flowers blooming - and it shows a massive swath of the country from San Antonio across the Southeast to New York where spring arrived two to three weeks earlier than usual.
Throughout his campaign, Trump called the 2015 Obama Clean Water Rule - also known as the Waters of the United States rule - "unlawful" and "extreme," and he promised to put an end to the rule altogether. As of Tuesday, the two agencies responsible for putting the rule into action will instead now "review and reconsider" it.
Of course Trump, like other politicians, promises "clean air and clear water." After all, clean air and water consistently poll as a high priorities for Americans. But it's who Trump is really listening to, and what he does, that matters.
Opposition to the Clean Water Rule has been fierce, spearheaded by powerful interests like the agriculture industry, the fossil fuel industry, manufacturers, and real estate developers. Opponents have argued that the Clean Water Rule is essentially a federal land-grab, aimed at regulating private property. The American Farm Bureau has been especially outspoken against the rule, claiming it would require farmers to obtain permits to use chemicals near ditches and streams on land that are filled with water only seasonally.
And no, the American Farm Bureau is not a good guy in a farmer's hat. It is the trade group and lobbyist most answerable to massive corporate agri-businesses like mega-farms and 140,000-hog factories that create miles of nitrate pollution in creeks and rivers - along with eye-watering stench.
Consider also what happened on Monday. Brand new EPA administrator Scott Pruitt directed his staff to delay an initiative that would require mining companies to prove they can clean up after themselves in routine mining activities. The now-delayed initiative was an effort to reduce taxpayer liability and improve practices at mines.
Historically, mining companies have left a mountain of cleanup costs to state and federal governments. Before environmental regulations, mining companies would just walk away, and even in recent years some companies just declared bankruptcy before they got around to clean-up work. One 2015 report found that cleaning up mines in Western states could cost taxpayers up to $21 billion.
This is the same Scott Pruitt, former attorney general of Oklahoma, who was hurriedly confirmed by the majority Republican Senate - just days before the expected first release of his illegally withheld emails showing his cozy relationship and favors to corporate executives of fossil fuel companies. Now Pruitt and Trump are expected to rollback a 2015 regulation limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Meanwhile, 2016 was our planet's warmest year on record, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA. On top of that, January 2017 was the third-warmest January in 137 years of modern record-keeping. And NASA satellite data confirmed a carbon dioxide minimum above 400 ppm.
"Seeing global concentrations above the 400 ppm threshold at a time of year when atmospheric CO2 is typically at its lowest level is a critical turning point," NASA's Climate web page states.
How does one claim "to promote clean air and clear water" in one breath and brag in the next about his order to revive the Keystone XL dirty tar sands pipeline to clear the way for some of the dirtiest oil on the planet to be shipped through the breadbasket of America and over our largest fresh-water aquifer to be refined on the fragile Gulf coast and shipped, mostly, overseas. How can one claim to be caring, yet take pride in sweeping aside the voices of the Standing Rock Sioux to force the Dakota Access pipeline across their water sources and sacred lands?
One can't. Unless he's Donald Trump.