Trevor Hughes

And Trula, like a lot of other folks out there, are very happy with the president.

They wish he had done more to protect coal mining because under the Biden administration, a lot of coal mines are shutting down or sort of moving in that direction because a lot of coal-fired power plants are being pushed to shut down because of environmental considerations.

Now, the president has promised for years to protect coal miners.

And frankly, he's pushed to keep coal mines open.

And so people like Trula are looking out at her neighborhood, at her area.

And she says, you know, my husband lost his job as a coal miner.

My son lost his job as a coal miner.

But my husband got a job at the reclamation and her son is getting a different job at a different coal mine because that one is going to remain open because coal still is producing a lot of electricity in this country.

But.

For her, you know, they drive, they live in a very rural area, so they drive 100 miles round trip for groceries.

When you're driving 100 miles round trip to Sam's Club, that price of gas makes a huge difference.

I paid, I think, $35 to fill up my 25-gallon tank the other day.

During the height of the gas crisis, it was closer to $80.

But for many of these rural areas where there are coal mines and giant coal generating power plants, it's been the backbone of their economy.

These are jobs where you can earn $75, $100 an hour, depending on overtime, really good, solid, reliable jobs day in and day out.

And so when a president like Obama or Biden or even Hillary Clinton said, we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of business, they understood what was going to happen.

And the issue has been in those rural remote areas, there's not a lot of other job opportunities.

And so if you take away that single largest employer, those huge jobs, those huge reliable paychecks, you can devastate a community.

And the folks out there are very cognizant of that.

And that really did drive their decision making when it comes to presidential elections.