Donald Trump has never earned a reputation as an animal lover, but as part of the president’s relentless crusade against wind power, he tends to present himself to the public as someone who cares deeply and profoundly about protecting wildlife.

As a rule, Trump often focuses on false claims about wind turbines killing birds, but he has also argued that wind turbines “are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before.” Other administration officials have made related comments.

Part of the problem with such rhetoric is it’s plainly untrue. But the other part of the problem is Team Trump’s interest in protecting whales seems awfully selective. The New York Times reported:

A powerful panel of Trump administration officials voted unanimously on Tuesday to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from measures to protect endangered whales and other imperiled species.

The panel, the Endangered Species Committee, a high-level group that is often called the God Squad because it essentially holds the power to decide whether a species lives or dies, adopted the move during a brief, closed-door meeting at the Interior Department.

At the heart of the matter is an endangered species known as Rice’s whales, which live in the Gulf of Mexico. As Vox reported, their numbers have dwindled to the point of near extinction. In Trump’s first term, federal officials provided them protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The oil and gas industry represent the whales’ greatest threat, but with the legal protection in place, they had a chance to survive and hopefully grow their numbers.

This week, the Trump administration decided oil drilling in the Gulf was more important than the future of Rice’s whales — among other endangered species that also live in the Gulf.

“What happened today is a warrant for the extinction of endangered species in the Gulf, signed by political appointees on behalf of some of the wealthiest companies on Earth,” Andrew Wetzler, senior vice president for nature at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “The ‘God Squad’ was designed for impossible, intractable conflicts where there was no other way forward. That is not what this is.”

The developments will likely end up in court, but in the meantime, keep the administration’s decision in mind the next time Trump and his team peddle dubious claims about animal life while taking aim at wind power.

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