Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump showed up in West Virginia on Thursday wearing a coal miner’s hat.
Advertisement
In a statement released before her visits to Kentucky and West Virginia on Monday, he referred to the “real and devastating effects of the Obama-Clinton War on Coal”.
Trump said he’s planning to help raise money for the Republican Party and hinted that he might have help from the party during the general election. “Forget this one – the primary is done”, he continued, urging voters to forfeit their right to America’s democratic process.
And, you know, being a loose cannon doesn’t in any way protect him, I hope, from being asked the hard questions that he should have been asked during the whole primary process. At the same event, he told the crowd not to bother voting in next week’s primary. “And I’m not going to do that”. “I’m the only one left”, he said.
Former Gov. Bobby Jindal – Edwards’ immediate predecessor and a former candidate for president himself – has said he’ll reluctantly back Trump now.
“I just want to know”, Mr. Copley said, “how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of, out of jobs, and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend, because those people out there don’t see you as a friend”.
Trump, however, has yet to explain exactly how he will revitalize Appalachia’s coal industry.
She pointed to comments she has heard Trump make about other countries getting nuclear weapons (“I think that’s just downright dangerous”), minimum wage being too high (“I think we need to raise the minimum wage”) and his infamous comment about women being punished for having abortions (“that is just beyond anything that I can imagine”). Trump had previously accused Clinton of being an “enabler” to her husband’s behavior, but he ramped up his rhetoric on Friday.
Trump, whose team had passed out signs that read, “Trump Digs Coal”, said that, if he’s elected, “We’re going to put the miners back to work”. Working-class voters, some of them former Democrats, have become the face of Trump’s movement, and they have helped fuel his unexpected trajectory to the nomination – and could be a force in the general election.
McAuliffe (D) also ran Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008 and laid the foundation for a strong fundraising operation in the Commonwealth.
For Trump’s part, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he was surprised Clinton is close to her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders in the polls.
“Terrible”, he mockingly chastised. “That’s awful. You should be ashamed of yourselves!”
It was his first campaign rally since being declared the presumed Republican nominee after winning the IN primary on Tuesday.
Advertisement
In this cockeyed campaign year, though, the divide at the moment is between the country’s top two Republicans: the presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, a conspicuous holdout from the candidate’s bandwagon and a man once denounced by Trump for producing a “death wish” budget.
