Zeldin The Destroyer

How a scandal-plagued Long Island lawyer became Trump's most destructive EPA administrator—and turned America's environmental watchdog into his personal revenge fantasy

This is part of The Powell House Press’s ongoing series examining Donald Trump’s inner circle — a necessary excavation when the relentless velocity of scandal and crisis threatens to overwhelm our capacity for serious scrutiny. The constant churn of chaos risks leaving us dangerously uninformed about the people wielding unprecedented power over American institutions. Behind every inflammatory tweet and manufactured controversy lie individuals whose personal histories and psychological profiles shape policies affecting millions of lives. In peeling back carefully constructed public personas, I aim to understand not just what these figures do, but who they are — and why that distinction has never mattered more for American democracy.