Today President Donald Trump visits the Environmental Protection Agency – the snake which he has scotched but which he is sadly a long way from killing.

On SiriusXM Breitbart News Daily this morning Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow asked me why this simple job is proving so difficult for Trump’s appointed EPA chief. Listen to our exchange below:

Well here are 179 million reasons why, courtesy of a Daily Caller investigation.

Six nonprofit groups that criticized President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts failed to mention the nearly $179 million in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants they’ve received since 2009, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group (TheDCNF) analysis of federal spending data.

The agency has funded thousands of such groups since former President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but TheDCNF focused only on six of the largest nonprofit recipients in its analysis of grant data compiled by the watchdog Open The Books.

But if you had to limit yourself to just one reason, I’d say simply: Jimmy Kimmel.

Which isn’t to say that the amiable liberal chat show host represents the Belly of the Beast of Green Evil. Merely that Kimmel is the perfect example of the kind of person who makes conservatives like Scott Pruitt feel uncomfortable about sounding too hardcore on environmental issues.

Earlier this year, for example, Kimmel sent out this ugly message to his eight million Twitter followers.

Who wants to be dissed by easy-going, likeable, not-aggressively-political Jimmy Kimmel?

Not Scott Pruitt, clearly. And it’s not who Jimmy Kimmel is that matters so much as what he represents. He’s not one of those perma-campaigning enviro whackjobs like, say, Ed Begley Jr or Leo DiCaprio. He’s more on the lines of the average guy who doesn’t know much about climate change or environmentalism – but who knows a terrible injustice when he sees it and cannot help speaking out because, damn it, the children, the polar bears, the humanity!!!

If you were stupid, ill-informed and only got your opinions from the tainted liberal media – so that’s pretty much half of America – you would no doubt be wholly persuaded by the apparent sincerity and passion of Kimmel’s tweet.

Here’s the problem though. There is absolutely nothing disinterested about that apparently heartfelt opinion expressed by Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel is a director of the US environmental charity American Rivers. (Rich celebrities – Kimmel is worth $35 million – love to greenwash their image by prominent association with environmental groups.)

What possible reason, though, could Kimmel have for expressing such violently strong disapproval of the new EPA chief Scott Pruitt?

Oh yeah. Since 2010, American Rivers has received around $2,500,000 in grants from the Environmental Protection Agency. These are just the kind of hand-outs which are likely to dry up now that, under President Trump’s orders, the EPA’s budget has been slashed by $2 billion. Naturally, American Rivers – along with all the myriad other non-profits which were sucking on the teat of the EPA – is none too happy about being denied access to its milch cow.

This kind of cozy arrangement is no accident. As Paul Homewood notes, this is how the environmental movement simultaneously feathers its nest and entrenches its power base – and has done for decades. The European Union, for example, has exactly the same tainted and symbiotic relationship with environmental groups.

With both the EPA and the EU, what we have is state authorities handing out vast quantities of taxpayer-funded cash to left-leaning environmental lobby groups. In return for this free money – hey, it’s only taxpayer money, so what does it matter? – the environmental groups lobby on behalf of their sponsor to argue that it should have more power and be more proactive in the vital realm of protecting the environment.

All these different voices – Jimmy Kimmel on behalf of American Rivers here, the president of the American Lung Association there – it sounds like there’s grassroots support from all walks of life from people across America, all opposed to EPA cuts.

But in fact these free opinions are all bought and paid for.

Of course the American Lung Association doesn’t want the EPA’s budget cut. Since Obama’s inauguration – the ALA and its various regional offshoots – have snaffled a whopping $16.3 million from the EPA.

Similar rules apply to the many hundreds of other non-profits part-funded by the EPA. That $179 million figure cited by the Daily Caller referred to just the top six non-profits part-funded by the EPA. But check out this list of non-profits which have received EPA donations: it just goes on and on.

The Green Blob, as I keep saying, has many, many tentacles. Too many people are owned by it. Too many opinions have been corrupted by it. Too many credulous fools have been brainwashed by it.

Its natural habitat, of course, is a vast and stagnant swamp, where it is heavy protected by large numbers of parasitical creatures dependent on it for their survival.

If Trump hopes to succeed drain that vast mire of corruption, lies and suppurating evil, he may need to drill himself a much bigger hole.