‘Grifters gonna grift’: Scott Pruitt gets annihilated by Stephanie Ruhle's MSBNC panel for corruption at the EPA

An MSNBC panel on Tuesday called out EPA Director Scott Pruitt for corruption and defying the White House by giving raises to his favorite aides.

After it was reported on Monday that Pruitt might be the next Trump administration official to be fired, President Donald Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly made a point of publicly defending the EPA director.

The turmoil surrounding Pruitt's job came after reports said that he went against White House wishes to give his closest staffers a pay raise. The shady raises are just one controversy in a series of corruption scandals swirling around Pruitt.

During an MSNBC panel discussion on Tuesday, New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters noted that Trump had not kept his promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C.

"What we see here is a pattern that you see with other new officials to Washington who have flown a bit too close to the sun, have come from outside of the beltway, outside of national prominence, and decided that they are entitled to a lifestyle that they see others -- especially in the Trump administration with its excessive wealth -- living," Peters explained. "And that appears to be what happened here."

"It gets to the heart of the drain the swamp promise," he added. "And obviously the swamp has captured this administration, not the other way around."

Financial analyst Dan Nathan worried that Trump could replace Pruitt with someone even more corrupt.

"Think about the last month and a half of so," Nathan recalled. "Every single major cabinet member who's been replaced, we've gotten something worse. And that's the really scary aspect. When you think about how bad Pruitt has been -- he's a science denier for all intents and purposes."

"These guys... they always shoot the hostage in their negotiations. They're horrible at it," he said. "This is the donor class that's speaking in the stock market [selloff] right now. They do not like this sort of chaos in Washington. And I think the Pruitt thing, it's just -- you know, grifters gonna grift. There's just another grifter there. What comes next is really the scary part of it."

"Grifters gonna grift," host Stephanie Ruhle repeated for impact.

Watch the video below from MSNBC.