INDIANA, Pa. – Former President Donald Trump vowed Monday to unleash Pennsylvania’s energy sector if elected to a second term in the White House, pledging to get workers in the key swing state “pumping, fracking, drilling and producing like never before.”
Trump, 78, made the promise at a raucous rally in energy-rich western Pennsylvania, where he was flanked by dozens of supporters donning hard hats as he outlined his plan for slashing energy and electricity prices nationwide.
“If you vote for me, I will cut your energy and electricity prices in half within 12 months,” the GOP nominee said of the skyrocketing cost of energy and electricity — the latter of which has soared nearly 30% under the Harris-Biden administration, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.
“I will terminate the natural gas export ban, which makes it impossible for you to sell your product to a lot of countries that want it desperately,” Trump pledged.
“We have all of this stuff – more than anybody – [and] we don’t use it,” the former president said of the country’s untapped oil and natural gas reserves. “I will get Pennsylvania energy workers pumping, fracking, drilling and producing like never before.”
In his latest pitch to Keystone State voters, Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris as “the candidate of the tax collectors and the Washington bureaucrats” while calling himself “the candidate of the American worker.”
He railed against the Democratic nominee’s various proposals to raise taxes and said her “biggest tax hike of all is her vicious attack on Pennsylvania energy.”
“Just a few months ago, Kamala imposed a natural gas export ban,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the Harris-Biden administration’s January pause on certain exports of liquefied natural gas over climate change concerns.
“That is brutalizing Pennsylvania energy jobs,” he said of the policy.
Trump also dismissed Harris’ recent flip-flop on fracking, arguing, “if anybody here believes that [Harris] will let your energy industry continue – like fracking – you should immediately go to a psychiatrist and have your head examined.”
“On dozens of occasions, Kamala has said that she intends to ban fracking,” Trump reminded Pennsylvania voters, before playing a clip of the vice president touting on the “Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon in 2019 that she will be “putting an end to fracking once and for all.”
Indiana County GOP committee chairman Randy Degenkolb told The Post that Harris’ initial opposition to hydraulic fracturing frightened residents of the Pennsylvania county, where there are “more shallow gas wells” than anywhere else in the state.
“We are an energy county,” Degenkolb said. “That’s our history.”
“That scared the heck out of our county,” he said of Harris’ repeated calls to ban fracking.
“For us, that’s a lie,” Degenkolb said of the vice president’s recent reversal.
Indiana County went 66.1% for Trump in 2016 and 68.2% for the 45th president in 2020.
“Fracking is huge in our area,” Kelsey Crispen, a 33-year-old hospital worker from neighboring Armstrong County, told The Post after the rally.
“I don’t believe a word that woman says,” she said of Harris’ fracking flip-flop, noting that under the Harris-Biden administration, her utility prices went up by “hundreds of dollars.”
“It just hasn’t slowed down,” Crispen said. “Our daughter had to quit cheer because we had to cut back.”
Her husband Brad, a 43-year-old auto technician, said the fracking industry was “thriving back when Trump was in office” and had a “trickle-down effect” on the local economy.
“It helps out a small town,” he said of having a booming energy economy in the western parts of the state.
Harris has a slim 0.7 percentage point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.
The state has 19 crucial Electoral College votes up for grabs in November that could determine the winner of the race.
“There’s no way,” Trump said of polls showing a tight race in Pennsylvania. “It’s got to be a hell of a lot more than that.”
