If you’re thinking all this looks like the administration is working hard and possibly bending rules so President Trump can look good at a re-election rally in front of his base, that’s because it does.
Just before he concluded his 11-minute Veterans Dept. event at the White House late Thursday morning, President Donald Trump looked into the camera and plugged his re-election campaign event in West Virginia Thursday night.Â
“We’re going to West Virginia tonight, by the way,” Trump said that was supposed to be focused on helping veterans access health care more easily. “We’re going to have a very big announcement, which will be very exciting I think for the media and everyone else,” Trump continued.
“But we have a very big announcement tonight. I believe I’ll be making it in West Virginia, so that’ll be very exciting,” he teased.
That “very big announcement,” it turns out, was a well-guarded secret up until about 4 PM, when The New York Times reported West Virginia’s newly-elected Democratic governor will be switching sides, and becoming a Republican.Â
Governor Jim Justice, who “is said to have friendly relationships with some members of Mr. Trump’s family,” according to the Times, was a Democrat just long enough to get elected governor in 2016. In 2015 he switched to the Democratic Party, but before that Justice was a Republican. And now he is again.
“In Justice’s latest State of the State address,” CNN notes, “the governor mentioned Trump five times, and said he was good friends with the Trump family.”
That “very big announcement” isn’t the only news Trump is expected to reveal.
As it turns out, the Trump administration has been working hard to make this visit to West Virginia a big success. Trump has proven he cares only about keeping his base happy. Already running for re-election, the President has made a large number of campaign trips outside D.C. – all to states which he won.Â
And he won West Virginia big. In fact, it was his largest win over Hillary Clinton: nearly 42 points.
What else does the Trump administration have up its sleeve?
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke appears to have sped up the approvals needed so that tonight President Trump, at a campaign re-election rally, will announce the opening of a new coal mine expected to create 200 jobs.
“In the run-up to President Trump’s visit to West Virginia for a rally Thursday evening in Huntington, administration officials — with help from the coal industry and state political leaders — this week touted work by the U.S. Department of Interior to speed up approval of a permit for a new underground coal mine that could bring 200 mining jobs to the depressed coalfields of McDowell County,” the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.
“But the scope of what Interior officials did to ease the way for approval of a permit for the Berwind Mine, an underground operation that Ramaco Resources wants to open along the Virginia border, isn’t exactly clear yet,” the paper adds.
Here’s the key portion of the Gazette-Mail’s report:Â
Coal industry officials and some government sources also revealed this week that top officials within the Interior Department recently quietly approved a state DEP document called, “Guide to Consideration of Potential mining-related Impacts on the Guyandotte River and Big Sandy River Crayfishes.â€
That document, obtained by the Gazette-Mail this week, was approved — with a handwritten note in the upper-right corner, signed by Interior energy policy counselor Vincent DeVitor — on June 28. The state mining permit for Ramaco’s Berwind Mine was approved by DEP two days earlier, on June 26, according to state records. And the Fish and Wildlife Service actually signed off on the Ramaco permit, with a permit-specific letter, a week before that, on June 19.
If you’re thinking all this looks like the Trump administration is working hard and possibly bending rules so President Trump can look good at a re-election rally in front of his base, that’s because it does.
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