Trump takes reelection campaign to West Texas
President says Dem win would ‘destroy’ the US
MIDLAND, Texas — President Donald Trump took sweeping digs at “crazy left radical Democrats” on a trip Wednesday to the fracking fields of West Texas.
Trump, speaking in front of stacked oil barrels, also played down the difficulties of the U.S. oil and gas industry, which is still struggling with the pandemic economic downturn.
“We’re OK now. We’re back, we’re back,” Trump said to a crowd scattered with people wearing cowboy hats and face masks. He sought to contrast his support for oil and gas with Democratic rival Joe Biden’s more climate-friendly energy plan, though Biden himself has stopped short of calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the production method that spurred U.S. oil and gas to a yearslong boom that started under President Barack Obama.
“If they got in, you would have no more energy coming out of the great state of Texas,” Trump said.
Speaking under a tent on a hot, windy day, Trump said a Democratic White House win and the policies of the “Washington crazy left radical Democrats” would mean “the death of American prosperity. It would destroy our country.”
Trump also praised a step he took last week to rescind an Obama-era fair housing rule for low-income families, tweeting warnings to what he called the “Suburban Housewives of America.”
“They want to uproot and demolish every American value. They want to wipe away every trace of religion from national life. They want to indoctrinate our children, defund our police, abolish the suburbs, incite riots and leave every city at the mercy of the radical left,” Trump declared.
Trump was combining campaigning and fundraising in his first trip to an oil and gas rig, and his first visit as president to the Permian Basin. He expected to raise $7 million, including $100,000 per person for one event.
Trump’s loyal donors and supporters in the oil and gas industry are dealing with the state’s fierce coronavirus outbreak and the boom-turned-bust of oil and gas.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported American petroleum use plummeted to a nearly 40-year low this spring, due to the pandemic lockdown and market oversupply, partly because of intensive oil and gas production that Trump encouraged.
Trump’s government has exerted itself for the oil and gas industry. That includes rolling back environmental and public health protections, and speeding up permitting as part of what Trump describes as an American march to global energy dominance.