President Donald Trump signed executive orders Tuesday to benefit the coal industry in the U.S., appearing in front of a backdrop of coal miners at the White House. And if there was one thing to take away from Trump’s carefully crafted stunt, it’s that he believes Americans don’t want fancy penthouses or desk jobs. Americans want to work in the coal mines, according to the president.
“One thing I learned about the coal miners is that’s what they want to do,” Trump said. “You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of a job and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal, that’s what they love to do.”
Trump made this assertion while making fun of his 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton, who he said wanted coal miners to get other jobs making “widgets and gadgets and technology, which they didn’t want to do.” The president, clearly still obsessed with an election from 9 years ago, said that Clinton wanted these same people to make phones.
“She was going to put them in a high-tech industry where you make little cell phones and things, I don’t know, do you think you’d be good at that?” Trump said.
Trump: “One thing I learned about the coal miners — that’s what they want to do. You could give them a penthouse on 5th Avenue and a different kind of a job and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal. She was gonna put them in a high tech industry where you make little cell phones and things.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 8, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Trump even repeated his story Tuesday night at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner, calling them “gidgets, and widgets and wadgets.”
Trump’s insistence that coal miners had no desire to build phones is especially funny given the fact that his advisors are appearing on TV saying that’s precisely what Americans should be doing right now.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation this past Sunday and was asked about previous comments where he said that factories should be brought from overseas to the U.S., but said that there would be “robotics” in those factories, suggesting humans wouldn’t benefit from those jobs. Asked by host Margaret Brennan if there would be humans employed in these hypothetical factories, Lutnick said there would be “millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones.”
Trump also spoke Tuesday about how new coal power plants were needed to power artificial intelligence technology. As Splinter put it, Trump is trying to Weekend at Bernies the coal industry. There are only about 140 coal plants left in the U.S. because they don’t make sense from any perspective. Wind and solar make more economic sense. And that’s before you even get into the environmental impact.
But Trump obviously doesn’t give a shit about the environment, let alone the best economic choices for this moment. The president has slapped tariffs on just about every country in the world (excluding Russia for some reason), ranging from 10% to as high as 104% on China. The tariffs are expected to dramatically raise prices on consumer goods for Americans and technology stocks have been taking the biggest beating in the markets.
The American Dream has taken many forms over the past century, but it’s safe to say that working back-breaking jobs and paying more for basic necessities has never been part of it. Getting paid a fair wage and being able to afford things for your family? That’s definitely the American Dream as most people would understand it.
The four executive orders Trump signed will allow coal plants to continue producing energy long after they were supposed to be retired. And they also direct federal agencies to allow coal leasing agreements on federal land, according to the Associated Press. Trump also suggested that he would use the free legal services that he extorted from Big Law firms recently to loosen coal pollution laws at the local level.
Trump is determined to drag this country back to the 19th century. And his fixation on tariffs and coal is sure to ruin countless aspects of American life before he’s finally shown the exit.