Latest / Sincerely American / The Biden Era Mess the EPA Is Undoing | Lee Zeldin

Transcript

The Biden Era Mess the EPA Is Undoing | Lee Zeldin · Sincerely American

• 0:09
  I'm so excited to speak with you.
• 0:10
  This is Administrator Lee Zeldin.
• 0:12
  I think everybody knows who you are, but in case you don't and
• 0:15
  he is working on our EPA and you're just doing incredible
• 0:18
  things over there. And we're so excited to hear
• 0:21
  about your agenda from last year and this year and just how it
• 0:24
  affects our day-to-day lives because it's a very important
• 0:26
  role. So my first question for you is
• 0:29
  what what was your biggest accomplishment in 2025?
• 0:32
  Well, hands down, it's the environmental wins.
• 0:34
  It's the Environmental Protection Agency, our core
• 0:36
  missions protecting human health and the environment.
• 0:39
  On the 100th day of President Trump's term in office, we put
• 0:42
  out a list of our top 100 environmental wins,
• 0:45
  accomplishments from the 1st 100 days.
• 0:47
  And then we did that again on the 200th day, on the 300th day,
• 0:50
  we're doing that again here today at the one year mark.
• 0:54
  So there's a lot of announcements, there's a lot of
• 0:56
  stuff that we work on at the EPA, but we won't lose sight of
• 0:59
  the first pill. A power and a Great American
• 1:01
  comeback. It's what President Trump is
• 1:03
  spoken about for a long time. A goal of clean air, land and
• 1:05
  water for all Americans. So how are you working?
• 1:08
  I've just spoke with Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Brooke
• 1:11
  Rollins, of course. So how are you working with them
• 1:14
  to, you know, make America healthy again?
• 1:16
  Because I know you guys have a very close partnership on, on
• 1:18
  all three fronts. Secretary Kennedy is our chair
• 1:21
  of the Mahawk Commission. He's done a really great job.
• 1:24
  I've enjoyed working with him and his team since being
• 1:27
  confirmed as EPA Administrator. Secretary Rollins, as you
• 1:30
  mentioned, and a number of other members of President Trump's
• 1:33
  Cabinet all served together on this Maha Commission at EPA.
• 1:38
  Something that we are finalizing right now is a Maha agenda
• 1:41
  specifically for EPA. In 2025, there was a Maha
• 1:47
  Commission report, an agenda that came out.
• 1:50
  It was a whole government interagency process where
• 1:53
  everybody had input a lot of meetings, a lot of
• 1:55
  consultations. What we want to do is put out an
• 1:58
  agenda specifically for EPA, and we're excited to roll that out
• 2:01
  in the coming weeks. So a huge topic that I hear
• 2:04
  people talking a lot about its pesticides when it comes to our
• 2:08
  produce. What are you guys doing on
• 2:11
  behalf of that? Because I know, you know, there
• 2:13
  is this balance where we are. We don't want to be big
• 2:16
  government regulators like the Biden administration, but we
• 2:18
  also want to improve food safety and health for our nation.
• 2:21
  So if you could speak a little bit to that.
• 2:23
  I think a lot of moms care about the produce that we're picking
• 2:25
  up at our stores. Well, it's important that we
• 2:27
  have the healthiest, most robust food supply in the world and in
• 2:33
  order to be able to pursue that goal.
• 2:37
  One of the biggest threats that the food supply faces is when a
• 2:40
  disease, a bug, a germ, a weed starts to infect these local
• 2:47
  farms. Now over the course of decades,
• 2:50
  there have been these pesticides that I get used and not all of
• 2:53
  them are equal. There's different toxicity, bio
• 2:55
  accumulation, persistence, different effects on human
• 2:58
  health, on the environment, on workers.
• 3:02
  There's different mitigation that can be used in different on
• 3:05
  different pesticides. Some are more toxic than others.
• 3:08
  In some cases there's a pesticide that might be out
• 3:10
  there that a tolerance gets built and what might be
• 3:13
  effective today is an effective tomorrow.
• 3:16
  So all of that is very important context to then implement
• 3:21
  statutory obligations. It's called FFRA.
• 3:24
  That is what's in federal statute requiring EPA to conduct
• 3:29
  science that I would say it's important to have gold standard
• 3:32
  science and to be radically transparent with the public on
• 3:36
  that science to make sure that only what gets approved is
• 3:41
  something that has been studied. It's been assessed for
• 3:44
  environmental risks, for worker risks, for human health risks
• 3:48
  mitigated, if it's possible to mitigate, and wherever there is
• 3:53
  a certain level of contamination to be working to clean it up, to
• 3:57
  mitigate. And that's a whole other area of
• 4:00
  EPA that does very important work to make sure that the soil
• 4:05
  is the highest quality possible, that water is clean, all on top
• 4:10
  of the obligations to have healthy air as well.
• 4:12
  So I know that you guys are working a lot on deregulating a
• 4:15
  lot of things across the agency. And I know that you've spoken
• 4:18
  that in the Biden administration, there was just
• 4:21
  so many regulations, it was causing a lot of red tape for
• 4:24
  our country. I'd love for you to kind of
• 4:26
  speak just on a basic day-to-day level about what you're doing at
• 4:28
  the EPA to improve people's lives through this deregulation
• 4:31
  effort, right? So what was happening during the
• 4:33
  Biden administration was a pursuit of an ideology that in
• 4:38
  order to protect the environment, we that we would
• 4:41
  have to suffocate the economy. That you have to choose between
• 4:44
  the two. That's a binary choice.
• 4:45
  You can pick one or the other, not both.
• 4:48
  President Trump and the Trump EPA believes that you could
• 4:50
  protect the environment and grow the economy.
• 4:53
  In 2023 and 2024, for example, there were a lot of Biden EPA
• 4:58
  regulations that were put into place to to tell workers out
• 5:02
  there in the energy industry just learn the code to try to
• 5:05
  put plants out out to reduce base load power as a consequence
• 5:10
  of energy costs go up. And there's all sorts of other
• 5:13
  negative consequences from it. We want to be able to fix
• 5:17
  everything. We want to get it right.
• 5:18
  We want more base load power in this country.
• 5:20
  We want more jobs, more affordable energy.
• 5:23
  We want to unleash energy dominance.
• 5:25
  That's also a key goal of President Trump.
• 5:28
  So when you look at all these regulations, especially
• 5:31
  regulations that were done in 2023 and 2024, the goal to
• 5:35
  unleash energy dominance requires us at EPA working with
• 5:40
  other agencies like the Department of Interior, the
• 5:42
  Department of Energy, which form the National Energy Dominance
• 5:46
  Council, another council that President Trump created to have
• 5:49
  agencies work together and collaborate to be able to fix
• 5:53
  this stuff and to be able to help deliver on that Trump
• 5:56
  mandate. Amazing.
• 5:57
  So switching gears, obviously a lot of people know you from
• 5:59
  Congress and then you made that incredible run in New York.
• 6:03
  You were actually the highest polling Republican governor, I
• 6:05
  think in New York history. You were so close.
• 6:08
  I think New York would be much better with you.
• 6:10
  But we're very happy that we have you on the federal level.
• 6:13
  So President Trump obviously values you and what you've done
• 6:16
  for the conservative movement a lot.
• 6:18
  What has that been like now coming in and working in his
• 6:20
  administration? How have you enjoyed that?
• 6:22
  President Trump is locked in. He's doing such a great job and
• 6:25
  we're just getting started. President Trump just one year
• 6:28
  into this four year term and he wants to make the most of every
• 6:32
  minute. I have experienced that you late
• 6:35
  night calls where I'm already in bed, lights are out and my
• 6:39
  phone's ringing and he wants to talk shop.
• 6:42
  He wants me to go call to other people and then call him back.
• 6:44
  And I'm looking at the time I said, you know, Mr. President, I
• 6:47
  don't know if I'm be able to reach both them right now.
• 6:50
  Are you sure you want me to call you back?
• 6:51
  What, what if it, what if it's not for a couple hours and he'll
• 6:54
  say and has said, whatever time it is, call me, I'll be up.
• 6:59
  I can think of one example in particular where I did end up
• 7:02
  having trouble reaching one of the people he wanted me to
• 7:05
  contact before calling him back. It was a really late time, in
• 7:10
  the middle of the night. I called him and he was wide
• 7:12
  awake and he was still working. I think that President Trump
• 7:15
  having the first four years in office, the time to reflect on
• 7:19
  it, the assassination attempts, winning the popular vote,
• 7:22
  winning all the battleground states, I believe that he is
• 7:26
  locked in in in a way that even in the first term, he wasn't
• 7:30
  locked in. And he put together a team that
• 7:34
  that likes each other, work well together.
• 7:36
  There's good chemistry. It's not like there's
• 7:38
  competition and friction and sharp elbows.
• 7:41
  We, we want President Trump to succeed.
• 7:44
  We want America to succeed, and President Trump has built A-Team
• 7:47
  to deliver on that. I don't think the man ever
• 7:50
  sleeps. That is hilarious.
• 7:51
  And by the way, I'd be scared for the guy that you were trying
• 7:53
  to reach that the president requested and he wasn't
• 7:56
  answering. So that's hilarious.
• 7:58
  I think that's fantastic, all the work that you're doing with
• 8:01
  him. And he obviously values a lot of
• 8:02
  you a lot in this administration.
• 8:04
  My final question for you is what are we looking forward to
• 8:07
  in 2026 and what's your biggest pitch to maybe an independent
• 8:10
  voter that doesn't necessarily know what you're doing over at
• 8:13
  the EPA, but why your role is important and what you're we're
• 8:16
  going to accomplish this year? Well, if you think about what
• 8:18
  voters elected in November of 2024 and you look now at the one
• 8:24
  year mark, a president who has delivered more secure borders,
• 8:29
  safer streets, a stronger economy.
• 8:32
  If you go agency by agency at what we have worked on to
• 8:36
  deliver on that Trump mandate, it's it's something unique that
• 8:41
  doesn't happen with past with many other presidents.
• 8:44
  And the slogan that I've heard of promises made, promises kept,
• 8:47
  when that's true, when a president makes commitments,
• 8:50
  pledges and then he delivers, it's just something special.
• 8:53
  I think a lot of people get turned off when they hear a
• 8:55
  politician promise when asking for a vote.
• 8:57
  If you elect me, this is what I'm going to do.
• 9:00
  Then they get elected and don't actually deliver on it.
• 9:02
  For us at the EPA, we're delivering on President Trump's
• 9:06
  campaign pledges where he says that he wants clean air, land
• 9:10
  and water for all Americans. And we had the hundreds of top
• 9:12
  environmental accomplishments to back it up.
• 9:14
  President Trump wants to unleash energy dominance.
• 9:16
  He wants permitting reform. He wants to make America the AI
• 9:19
  capital. He wants to protect and bring
• 9:21
  back the American auto job and the US auto industry and economy
• 9:26
  and protect the American workers.
• 9:27
  And just across the board on so many promises, we have been
• 9:31
  proud to do our part to deliver. It's just one of this one agency
• 9:35
  of this team of agencies working together to deliver for the
• 9:38
  American public. And there's more to do.
• 9:40
  And we're going to work hard all day, every day to get it done.
• 9:43
  Well, we're so thankful for all your amazing work.
• 9:45
  We're thankful for the administration in general, and
• 9:47
  we really appreciate your time. And I think the girls that watch
• 9:50
  this podcast learned a lot today.
• 9:51
  So thank you so much for joining us, Administrator.
• 9:54
  We appreciate it. Yes, ma'am.
• 9:56
  All right, sincerely, sisters. I think we learned a lot today.
• 9:59
  Like I said, we got very policy oriented, but there was just so
• 10:02
  much great information. And anything that we learned
• 10:05
  from these administration officials is that they're just
• 10:08
  so passionate about making America great again.
• 10:11
  And I'm just so thankful that we have these officials at the helm
• 10:15
  with President Trump. They're truly just improving
• 10:17
  this country and just making historic progress that is just
• 10:21
  for generations to come. And moms like myself, these are
• 10:24
  just so many issues that we are so passionate about because like
• 10:27
  I said, health and Wellness is the most important.
• 10:30
  If you don't have health, you don't have anything.
• 10:32
  And so I'm very proud to be here today.
• 10:34
  I'm really proud to be helping, you know, promote this agenda to
• 10:38
  the rest of the world. And, you know, I just, I, I,
• 10:41
  it's crazy to me that all of the stuff that we talked about today
• 10:43
  could even be considered controversial because this is
• 10:46
  issues that I think every American should get on board
• 10:49
  with. The health of our nation is so
• 10:51
  important and the health of our kids are so important.
• 10:53
  So I'm so thankful to have joined you guys here today.
• 10:56
  Definitely right in test. We'll be back next Wednesday of
• 10:58
  a normal episode and we'd love to hear your feedback and if you
• 11:01
  want to see more of these interviews.