Aug. 19 (UPI) – Former President Donald Trump promised on Monday that if he returns to the White House, he will “cut energy costs in half” and make massive changes to energy generation and production.
As part of a counterprogram to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, Trump spoke for 54 minutes in a girder-lined room inside a Pennsylvania defense factory, the Precision Components Group in York, Pennsylvania, which made components for the Hoover Dam, Seawolf-class nuclear submarines and laboratories such as the Los Alamos National Lab.
Trump, speaking to a crowd of several hundred invited guests and staff, focused mainly on energy and the economy and rarely deviated from those topics. At one point, Trump said he would tell Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, “You’re fired,” repeating his catchphrase from the reality TV show The Apprentice.
He warned that if Harris were elected, there would be a “great depression” like that of 1929.
Instead, Trump said a change in energy production would help stimulate economic growth.
Trump said he wanted to cut energy costs by 50 percent in his first 12 months in office.
He said he would help achieve this by ending electric vehicle regulations and eliminating “green energy” regulatory requirements.
He said that if Harris was elected, energy prices would “triple and quadruple” and the United States would “not produce a drop of oil.”
Trump supports fracking and urged oil producers to “drill, baby, drill.” He noted that Harris has changed her mind on the issue and is now in favor of it.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, power plants would be closed, he said, calling it a “regulatory jihad to shut down power plants.”
“We’re going to open dozens and dozens more,” he said. “We’re going to be leaders in the energy sector.”
Pennsylvania is a swing state in this election.
On Saturday, Trump attended a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, targeting the northeastern part of the Keystone State. Harris and her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, took a bus tour of the western part of the state with their wives on Sunday.
Trump plans to campaign in other key states on a variety of issues: Michigan on crime on Tuesday, North Carolina on national security on Wednesday, immigration at the Montezuma Pass border in Arizona on Thursday and Nevada on “no tax on tips” on Friday. He also plans a rally in the Phoenix area on Friday.
