Conspiracy theories are a helluva drug.
Side note: Its all the more hilarious that Trump's face, encircled in Russian, is now plastered over the cancer-inducing asbestos pallets.
> During Pruitt’s confirmation hearings, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey asked Pruitt whether he would allow the EPA to ban asbestos. Pruitt responded evasively, saying he would seek the “input of a wide range of stakeholders to ensure sound and inclusive rulemaking and not to produce or dismiss comments from one particular entity.
https://www.milbank.org/quarterly/articles/deregulating-safe...
As for the larger picture of why republicans are going this way, this book explains the trends:
"The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump"
https://www.milbank.org/quarterly/articles/deregulating-safe...
That is actually one of the fundamental features of populism, an attempt to return to a former (imaginary and fictitous) "golden age" whose promise has been stolen and corrupted by scapegoats and enemies (in the case of Trumpism, those being progressives, environmentalists and immigrants.)