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| Rick Perry formally announced as Trump pick for energy secretary | Rick Perry formally announced as Trump pick for energy secretary |
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| US president-elect Donald Trump has formally announced Rick Perry as his choice to lead the US department of energy. | US president-elect Donald Trump has formally announced Rick Perry as his choice to lead the US department of energy. |
| If the nomination is confirmed by the US Senate, the move would put the former Texas governor and Trump’s one-time presidential rival in charge of a federal department that he had proposed eliminating during his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. | If the nomination is confirmed by the US Senate, the move would put the former Texas governor and Trump’s one-time presidential rival in charge of a federal department that he had proposed eliminating during his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. |
| Perry’s name adds to the list of oil drilling advocates skeptical about climate change who have been picked for senior positions in Trump’s cabinet. He has advocated lighter regulation on the oil industry, and has said that the science around climate change is “unsettled”. | |
| Trump’s selections have worried environmentalists but cheered an industry eager for expansion. | |
| Perry’s proposal to scrap the energy department caused embarrassment during a November 2011 debate when he could not remember all the cabinet-level departments he wanted to eliminate. | |
| “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: commerce, education and the, um, what’s the third one there? Let’s see,” Perry said. His debate opponents tried to prod his memory but Perry ultimately gave up, saying, “I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” | |
| Perry, who also briefly ran in the 2016 presidential race, served as governor of Texas, a leading oil-producing state, from 2000 when he succeeded President George W Bush until 2015. In his unsuccessful presidential runs, he touted his record of job creation in the second-most-populous state. | |
| Perry was a fierce critic of Trump last year before dropping out of the race, calling him “a cancer on conservatism” who offered “a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense”. | |
| Trump also had harsh things to say about Perry during the campaign, even belittling his glasses by saying: “He put on glasses so people will think he’s smart.” Once Trump secured the nomination, Perry endorsed him as “the people’s choice”. | |
| In a statement from Trump’s transition team, the president-elect cited Perry’s tenure leading Texas, a leading oil-producing state and the nation’s second-most-populous one, from 2000 until 2015. | In a statement from Trump’s transition team, the president-elect cited Perry’s tenure leading Texas, a leading oil-producing state and the nation’s second-most-populous one, from 2000 until 2015. |
| “Rick Perry created … a business climate that produced millions of new jobs and lower energy prices in his state, and he will bring that same approach to our entire country as secretary of energy,” Trump said in the statement. | “Rick Perry created … a business climate that produced millions of new jobs and lower energy prices in his state, and he will bring that same approach to our entire country as secretary of energy,” Trump said in the statement. |