President Trump Rallies for Recarbonization—Dump the Windmills, ‘We’re a Nation of Builders’

Aug. 14, 2019 (EIRNS)—Speaking yesterday in Monaco, Pennsylvania at the Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemical Complex, a jovial President Donald Trump enthusiastically hailed what he called “a revolution in American energy,” that has occurred under his administration.

While repeating his mistaken perception that the U.S. economy is the best and “hottest in the world,” he nonetheless lavished praise on the workers present, whose productivity, he said, has been increased by his administration’s lifting of “burdensome regulations” that unfairly punished American workers. Now, he said, there is an unstoppable production of natural gas, oil, coal and steel, and more than 520,000 new manufacturing jobs created since 2016.

Trump described the Shell petrochemical complex as the single-biggest construction project in the country, producing “clean, affordable, all-American natural gas.” Forget about the windmills, which kill birds, destroy property values and stop producing power when the wind stops blowing, he said. “We’re not only unleashing American energy, we’re restoring the glory of American manufacturing, and we are reclaiming our noble heritage as a nation of builders again. A nation of builders.”

For generations, the President emphasized, “American greatness was forged and fueled and won by the extraordinary workers of this region.” Pennsylvania steel “raised the skyscrapers that built our cities.... We have to have a steel industry.... Miners lit up our towns and powered our industries; Pennsylvania factory workers made the American brand into the universal symbol of excellence all around the world.”

Trump told the Shell workers that the American political class, under previous administrations, “gutted your factories with horrendous trade deals,” such as NAFTA. The Paris Climate Accord, signed by the Obama Administration, “would have taken away our wealth.” Now, he vowed, “my administration is clearing the way for other massive, multibillion-dollar investments,” for LNG, and other energy sources to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

As for the Democrats and their presidential candidates, “They have radical plansto wipe out our coal.” Remember Hillary Clinton’s attack on coal in West Virginia, he recalled. “They want to wipe out our natural gas industries.... Virtually every leading Democrat has vowed to eliminate our fossil fuels, obliterating millions of American jobs, devastating communities and bankrupting factories.”

“Our vision,” Trump said, “is pro-worker, pro-jobs, pro-family, pro-growth, pro-energy, and 100 percent pro-American.”