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Mueller Crosses Trump's "Red Line," Expands Investigation to Include Trump's Businesses

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Skip Intro7/20/2017 4:10:53 pm PDT

Trump wants a talk-radio host to be the USDAā€™s chief scientist

Yesterday, the Trump administration formally named its candidate for the Department of Agricultureā€™s undersecretary of research, education, and economics, a post that serves as the agencyā€™s chief scientist. Its choice? Sam Clovis, who has no scientific background but is notable primarily for having been a conservative talk-radio host. If approved by the Senate, the USā€™ attempts to understand climate changeā€™s impact on agriculture will be led by someone who called climate research ā€œjunk science.ā€

Clovis, who has also taught economics and management at an Iowa liberal arts college, was an early supporter of Trumpā€™s candidacy. Heā€™s been working at the USDA as a White House advisor since shortly after Trumpā€™s inauguration. Suggestions that heā€™d be nominated to this position have been circulating for a while, but his official nomination only came yesterday.

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In 2014, when Clovis was running for senate in Iowa, he did an interview with the stateā€™s public radio station in which he was asked about climate change. After the interviewer highlighted the widespread acceptance of climate change within the scientific community, Clovis responded by saying, in effect, that scientists were trying to fool him. ā€œI have looked at the science, and I have enough of a science background to know when Iā€™m being boofed,ā€ he said. (Pro Publica checked and found that Clovis had never even taken an undergraduate level course in any science.)

Trump has an infallible ability to find the worst possible person to fill every government post.

arstechnica.com