I’m still trying to fathom the unfathomable about one of Donald J. Trump’s key administration appointments.

That would be Scott Pruitt being named to head the Environmental Protection Agency. I added the emphasis for a reason. Now I shall explain.

The EPA is designed, as its title suggests, to protect the environment, to ensure that we have clean air, water, that our land doesn’t blow away in the wind. Its mission is to enact regulations to ensure that we preserve our land, water and air.

President Nixon, of all people, thought creating the EPA was a worthwhile endeavor, so he did it in 1970.

The president-elect, though, has selected a sworn enemy of the EPA. Pruitt is the Oklahoma attorney general who has sued the EPA because he — and presumably the rest of his state government — doesn’t like the regulations that the EPA places on industries, such as oil and gas exploration, which is a big deal in Oklahoma (and in Texas, for that matter).

Pruitt’s mission in his public life hasn’t been to protect the environment, or to shore up the agency assigned to do that important task. Oh, no. He has declared war on the EPA.

I am failing big time to grasp how this appointment is supposed to work. Is the president-elect in league with this guy, Pruitt? Does he want to disband, dismantle and disassemble the EPA?

The very term “EPA” has become, in effect, a four-letter word in what has become of Republican orthodoxy. What a shame it is that a tried-and-true Republican, Richard Nixon, would create a valuable federal agency only to have it placed in the hands of someone who seemingly wants to destroy it.

When in God’s world did clean air and water become bad things?