People who dislike this situation need to stop taking the Trump administration's (and allies') statements at face value, like David Harkey does in the article, and stop calling them crazy. Either way, they are playing you and distracting you, and you are inadvertently acting as their messengers.
Using the universal analytical tool cui bono (more powerful than an LLM) and their own explicit words, there's a consistent, non-crazy strategy: Support the fossil fuel industry in every way possible (which appeals to some people; I'm not writing a critique; you should understand this.):
* Destroy or acquire national competitors: Venezuala, Iran,
even Nigeria
* Buy off domestic competitors: using tax dollars to bribe
renewable energy developments to stop
* A million other policy and political actions, major and
and minor; even opposing bike lanes.
Regarding 'crazy', it's a form of aggression - demonstrating there is no length to which they won't go, to intimidate the other side into backing down. It's been the American neo-right rhetorical tactic going back decades - be aggressive, and if that doesn't work, be more aggressive. Because nobody else has figured out this very basic tactic (used by even by animals), people keep backing down and the tactic keeps working. You see people every day saying they are hopeless, tired, resigned, etc. Why would the neo-right stop - this is working amazingly well!
(If you doubt it, see if my hypothesis predicts future events.)