Nominee’s Withdrawal Shows Loyalty Trumps All in MAGA-Verse
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Kathleen Sgamma, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, today withdrew her nomination. The announcement came after the investigative watchdog group Documented discovered a memo by Sgamma sent in January 2021 that criticized Trump and the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Alan Zibel, a researcher for Public Citizen focused on oil and gas issues, issued the following statement:
“The withdrawal of Kathleen Sgamma’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management appears not to be a reaction to her extensive experience representing fossil fuel companies, her contempt for environmental protections, or her dismissal of climate change as a meaningful problem. Instead, Sgamma’s unpardonable sin in Trump’s world appears to have been maintaining a connection to shared reality and rejecting Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
“In Trump’s authoritarian universe, the only thing that matters is loyalty, and his nominees must keep their sane instincts private. In a normal environment, a federal nominee might withdraw for saying something outlandish, controversial or insensitive. But this nominee appears to have withdrawn for saying something completely obvious — that a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was morally repugnant.”