President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Thursday evening in West Virginia, touting gains in the stock market and saying that his administration has already kept its campaign promises to coal workers.
“As you have seen, I have kept that promise as President,” he told attendees at the rally at the 9,000-person Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington. “We are putting our coal miners back to work. We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal. We have stopped the EPA intrusion. American coal exports are already up.”
Trump had promised at an earlier event that he would use the campaign rally to make a “very big announcement.”
At the event, Democratic West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced that he plans to switch parties and become a Republican, a move that brings the governor more in line with his state’s Republican tilt.
“Now, today I’ll tell you, with lots of prayers and lots of thinking, today I tell you as West Virginians, I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor,” Justice said. “So tomorrow, I will be changing my registration to Republican.”
Trump also went after the US Senate for not passing a health care package — saying that it’s “hard to believe” how Democrats and Republicans “let us down” on health care.
Referencing West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Trump said: “We have another friend with us tonight who voted for us on health care and honestly, how the Republicans and the Democrats let us down is hard to believe, repeal and replace, hard to believe, hard to believe. Senators.”
Trump has routinely used the campaign trail as a way to shore up his base, visiting states that helped deliver him the White House to hold raucous rallies that regularly see the President return to the rhetorical flare that defined him during his 2016 campaign. And Thursday night’s event in Huntington was no different.
“All across the country, Americans of every kind are coming together with one simple goal: Make American Great Again,” Trump said. “The stock market reached yet another all-time, in history, all-time high today. Boosting the retirement savings of everyone in this room. Have you all been helped? I think so. Unemployment is at a 16-year low. But don’t forget, and I will never forget, the millions and millions of people out there that want jobs that don’t register on the unemployment rolls because they gave up looking for jobs.”
Trump has already declared his intent to run again in 2020, and his reelection campaign is already up and running, including raising money and hosting events across the country. To date, the President has headlined campaign rallies in Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Ohio.
Thursday’s event was the Trump’s seventh campaign rally in roughly six months.
West Virginia delivered Trump one of his strongest victories during the 2016 election, with nearly 70% of the state’s electorate backing the businessman-turned-politician. And while Trump’s national approval rating has steadily gone down since he stepped into the Oval Office in January, his approval rating has remained strong in West Virginia.
According to a July Gallup poll, 60% of residents in West Virginia approve of Trump’s presidency, higher than other state.
One reason for that optimism: Trump’s repeated promises to bring back coal jobs.
“A lot of people are going to be put back to work, a lot of coal miners are going back to work,” Trump told a crowd in Kentucky in March. “The miners are coming back.”
Trump has also singled out West Virginia as a state that will benefit from policy changes like his plan to end regulations that protect waterways from coal mining waste.
