NOT FUNNY

Oil Execs Laughed Over How Easy it is to Get Access to Trump

A recording of oil execs at a closed door meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Southern California suggests they don’t take the president seriously.

A secret tape of a closed-door meeting of high-level oil executives with the Independent Petroleum Association of America exposes just how the group feels they have U.S. president Donald Trump wrapped around their finger. The tape, which was sent to The Center for Investigative Reporting and reported by Politico, was from a meeting celebrating their former lawyer David Bernhardt’s appointment to the Dept. of the Interior. Several times during the one hour event, the audience can be heard laughing when Dan Naatz, the association’s political director, bragged about their access to the president. “We know him very well, and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues,” Naatz can be heard saying, according to Politico which reports that “the oil executives were almost giddy at the prospect of high-level executive branch access of the sort they hadn’t enjoyed since Dick Cheney, a fellow oilman, was vice president.”

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