While Hillary was at a roundtable meeting in West Virginia, she was confronted with regards to a comment she made at a town hall in March: We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Hillary claims that this comment was a misstatement.
One man asked, “How you could say you are going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend?”
“I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context for what I meant because I have been talking about helping coal country for a very long time,” Hillary said in a reply. “It was a misstatement because what I was saying is the way things are going now, they will continue to lose jobs. It didn’t mean that we were going to do it. What I said is that is going to happen unless we take action to help and prevent it.”
For a long time fossil fuel interests have pushed Hillary and Obama to look as if they are waging a war on coal. While it is true that Hillary has sided with Obama and his clean energy plan, Bernie Sanders has taken an even more aggressive approach when it comes to clean energy.
Even though Hillary has pledged to use large sums of money on revitalizing the communities affected by the coal jobs leaving, she is still having a very difficult time gaining any traction in Appalachia.
“I do feel a little bit sad and sorry that I gave folks the reason, or the excuse, to be so upset with me, because that is not what I intended at all,” Clinton said. It will be difficult for her to gain any traction in this region, as the damage was done with the remarks that she made at the town hall in March.
What do you think? Was this a misstatement? Doesn't appears so to me. It does appear she wants to work to give coal country alternatives, but this was by no means as misstatement. She just took a regrettable path when it comes to the wording she chose.
