At a Dinner, Trump Assailed ClimateRules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil - New York Times

By Lisa Friedman, Coral Davenport, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman

May 9, 2024

At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil - The New York.

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At a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the former president said fossil fuel companies should donate to help him beat President

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Works Cited:

Friedman, Lisa, Coral Davenport, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman. “At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil.” The New York Times, 9 May 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/climate/trump-oil-gas-mar-a-lago.html.

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Former President Donald J. Trump told a group of oil executives

and lobbyists gathered at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort last

month that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential

campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental

rules that he said hampered their industry, according to two people

who were there.

About 20 people attended an April 11 event billed as an “energy

round table” at Mr. Trump’s private club, according to those people,

who asked not to be identified in order to discuss the private event.

Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation

and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil

industry.

The event was organized by the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who

has for years helped to shape Republican energy policies. It was

first reported by The Washington Post.

Mr. Trump has publicly railed for months against President Biden’s

energy and environmental agenda, as Mr. Biden has raced to

restore and strengthen dozens of climate and conservation rules

that Mr. Trump had weakened or erased while in office. In

particular, Mr. Trump has promised to eliminate Mr. Biden’s new

climate rules intended to accelerate the nation’s transition to

electric vehicles, and to push a “drill, baby, drill” agenda aimed at

opening up more public lands to oil and gas exploration.

Mr. Biden has called climate change an existential threat and has

moved to cut the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet

and supercharging storms, heat waves and drought.

Over a dinner of chopped steak, Mr. Trump repeated his public

promises to delete Mr. Biden’s pollution controls, telling the

attendees that they should donate heavily to help him beat Mr.

Biden because his policies would help their industries.

“That has been his pitch to everybody,” said Michael McKenna,

who worked in the Trump White House but did not attend the event

in Florida.

Mr. McKenna said the former president’s appeal to the fossil fuel

industry could be summed up as: “Look, you want me to win. You

might not even like me, but your other choice is four more years of

these guys,” referring to the Biden administration. He added, “The

uniform sentiment of guys in the business community is ‘We don’t

want four more years of Team Biden.’”

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, did not

address the specifics of what Mr. Trump was described as saying at

the dinner. In a statement, she attacked President Biden as

controlled “by environmental extremists who are trying to

implement the most radical energy agenda in history and force

Americans to purchase electric vehicles they can’t afford,” and that

Mr. Trump is “supported by people who share his vision of

American energy dominance to protect our national security and

bring down the cost of living for all Americans.”

Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign on Thursday accused Mr. Trump

of “straight up selling out working families for campaign donations

from oil barons.”

Mr. Biden has frustrated the fossil fuel industry by pursuing the

most ambitious climate agenda in the nation’s history. He has

signed a sweeping law that pumps $370 billion into incentives for

clean energy and electric vehicles and has enacted a suite of tough

regulations designed to sharply reduce emissions from the burning

of oil, gas and coal.

This year, the Biden administration paused the permitting process

for new facilities that export liquefied natural gas in order to study

their impact on climate change, the economy and national security.

But the fossil fuel industry has also enjoyed record profits under

the Biden administration. Last year, the United States produced

record amounts of oil. And even with the pause in new permits for

gas export terminals, the United States is the world’s leading

exporter of natural gas and is still on track to nearly double its

export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and

under construction.

Mr. Biden has also approved several oil and gas projects sought by

the fossil fuel industry.

He has authorized an enormous $8 billion oil development in

Alaska known as the Willow project. He also granted a crucial

permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project championed by

Senator Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat, despite

opposition from climate experts and environmental groups. Last

month, undeterred by opposition from climate activists, the Biden

administration also gave approval for an oil export project in Texas

known as the Sea Port Oil Terminal.

Some oil and gas executives have said that they would prefer some

of Mr. Biden’s regulations to remain, such as a rule requiring

companies to detect and stop methane leaks from oil and gas wells.

They said they wanted consistency rather than an endless pattern

of regulatory whiplash in which rules are enacted by one

administration, repealed by the next and restored by the one after

that.

Many, however, have attacked Mr. Biden’s policies, and the

industry has contributed heavily to Mr. Trump’s presidential

campaign.

Although attendees were told that Mr. Trump’s event was an

energy round table, waiting on the chairs of executives and

lobbyists at Mar-a-Lago were printouts of PowerPoint slides about

migrants at the southern border.

Part of the meeting dwelled on migration, and Mr. Trump declared

he wanted separate divisions of Ultimate Fighting Championship

fighters: one designated for immigrants who came across the

border illegally, and the other for “Americans.”

The room was filled predominantly with oil and gas executives,

including Mike Sabel, the chief executive and founder of Venture

Global LNG; Toby Rice, the president and chief executive of EQT

Corporation; Jack Fusco, the chief executive of Cheniere Energy;

and Nick Dell’Osso, the president of Chesapeake Energy.

Also in the room were Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota

and a former Republican presidential candidate who has been

acting as Mr. Trump’s point man on energy issues; and Mr. Hamm,

the billionaire executive chairman of Continental Resources, which

is among the biggest oil and gas drilling companies in Oklahoma

and North Dakota.

Accompanied by Susie Wiles, his top political adviser; Taylor

Budowich, a former aide; and Meredith O’Rourke, a fund-raiser,

Mr. Trump asked the executives to detail their concerns on energy

issues, according to the two attendees.

The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s top fossil fuel

industry group, is running an eight-figure national advertising

campaign to promote fossil fuels and “dismantle policy threats,”

Mike Sommers, the chief executive of the trade group, has said.

Separately, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers,

which represents petroleum refiners, has started to buy ads in nine

battleground states urging Americans to fight Mr. Biden’s

regulation on tailpipe emissions.

And states with Republican attorneys general have filed legal

challenges against most if not all of Mr. Biden’s regulations,

including a suit announced on Thursday by 27 states arguing that

the administration overstepped its authority in cracking down on

smokestack pollution from power plants.

But Mr. Trump told executives they were not fighting hard enough.

He also went on a rant about windmills, the attendees said. Mr.

Trump has falsely claimed that wind turbines cause cancer and

that offshore wind farms are “driving whales crazy.”

Mr. Trump did not request money in exchange for killing Mr.

Biden’s climate regulations, the two people in the room maintained.

Rather, the former president told executives that he was

determined to squash what he considered anti-business policies,

and that the oil industry should therefore want him to win and

should raise $1 billion to ensure his success.

He told the executives that the amount of money they would save

in taxes and legal expenses after he repealed regulations would

more than cover a billion dollar contribution, the people said.

Mr. Hamm has had Mr. Trump’s ear on energy issues dating back

to the former president’s 2016 campaign and pushed him to appoint

Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency, where

Mr. Pruitt denied the established science of climate change and

unraveled environmental protections.

After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, Mr. Hamm briefly

supported some of the former president’s rivals, including Gov. Ron

DeSantis of Florida and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki

Haley. But the oil tycoon appeared to have had a change of heart.

Mr. Hamm donated $3,300 to Mr. Trump’s campaign last year, the

maximum allowed for a primary contribution, and another $3,300

in March, according to campaign filings.

Mr. Hamm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. McKenna said Mr. Hamm continued to play an outsize role in

Mr. Trump’s energy policy. “If Harold has an idea, the rest of us

have to chase it around,” he said. “Harold Hamm wants that L.N.G.

pause gone, he wants the California waiver and the tailpipe rule

gone.”

California has for decades received waivers under the Clean Air

Act that authorize it to set environmental rules that are tougher

than federal regulations. To do business in California, automakers

and other industries must comply with its rules. Mr. Trump has

promised to revoke California’s waivers.

A correction was made on May 9, 2024: An earlier version of a

picture caption with this article misstated the location of Mar-a-

Lago. It is in Palm Beach, Fla., not West Palm Beach.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error,

please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com. Learn more

Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing

climate change and the effects of those policies on communities. More about Lisa

Friedman

Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change,

for The Times. More about Coral Davenport

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald

Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential

campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former

President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

A version of this article appears in print on May 10, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the

headline: Trump Solicits Billion Dollars At Oil Dinner .