The Paris Accord is an exception. Pruitt spent more than a month advising Trump on that issue. It wasn’t easy. John Kelly hadn’t arrived as chief of staff, and the discussions in the Oval Office were disorganized. The deck looked stacked against withdrawal. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was against it. So was deputy national security adviser Dina Powell. Economic adviser Gary Cohn was wary. And Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were flatly opposed to withdrawal.

The discussions were “competitive,” Pruitt says. Other countries and multinational companies “were very, very intentional about staying in the accord. The Paris Accord was, in my view, never about CO2 reduction. It was clearly putting this country at an economic disadvantage.”

“Why do you go to Paris to apologize .  .  . when you’re already reducing CO2 levels? Why do you go to China and India and say, ‘Oh, by the way, you don’t have to do anything until 2030’? And India? ‘You get $2.5 trillion.’ And why did Russia [get] to increase its emissions?”