As a person who spent 40 years doing policy and government affairs work in the oil and gas industry, I have always paid close attention to what presidential nominees of both parties have to say — or do not say — about energy in their acceptance speeches.
The vast majority of the time, it has been much more about what they did not say.
Many such speeches since I first started paying attention to such things in 1980 (Reagan vs. Carter) said literally nothing at all on the topic. Most other nominees limited energy-related talk to a sentence or two.
In most election years, energy and its costs are just not a top-of-mind topic for most Americans. But that has all changed now in the wake of the Biden administration’s heavy focus on inflation-causing green subsidies and the rising public awareness of the central role that mushrooming energy costs play in prices for groceries and every other aspect of their lives.
So, after being stunned by how much time former President Donald Trump dedicated to the energy subject during his acceptance speech Thursday evening in Milwaukee, I decided to plow through the transcript of that 90-minute speech to figure out just how many words he had to say on the topic. Amazingly, the number comes to right at 1,000 words. It is impossible to know for sure, but I would speculate that is the most words ever spoken about energy by any nominee in such a speech in American history.
In addition to the predictable promise to bring a return to the “Drill, baby, drill” oil and gas philosophy that characterized his first presidency, the former president spoke at length on other plans for a second one.
- He openly mocked some elements of Biden’s Green New Deal agenda, at one point noting: “They spent $9 billion on eight chargers, three of which didn’t work.” He then called Biden’s obsession with forcing electric cars on a reluctant public “a crazy electric band-aid.”
- Trump promised to end Biden’s “EV mandates” on the day he is sworn into office. Given that some of the web of EV-promoting policies implemented by the Biden administration come via regulatory actions, achieving a full pullback will be a little more time-consuming than that.
- He talked at length about plans by Chinese companies to flood the American EV market with cars either made in Mexico or shipped from China into the U.S. through Mexico, saying the United Auto Workers union “should be ashamed” for continuing to support Biden and other Democrats while this is taking place.
- He accused the Biden administration of spending “trillions of dollars” on “the green new scam. It’s a scam. And that has caused tremendous inflationary pressures in addition to the cost of energy.”
- Trump noted that: “Under the Trump administration just three and a half years ago, we were energy independent” — which is factually accurate. The US did produce much more energy than it consumed throughout his presidency, and was a net exporter of oil, natural gas and coal in many months during that time.
- Trump continued: “But soon we will actually be better than that. We will be energy dominant and supply not only ourselves, but we will supply the rest of the world.” Well, maybe not the rest of the world, but surely much of it. It is a political speech, after all, so a little hyperbole fits.
- Trump further criticized the Biden White House for reversing the hard line he took with Iran while president, saying: “I told China and other countries, ‘If you buy from Iran, we will not let you do any business in this country, and we will put tariffs on every product you do send in of 100 percent or more.’ And they said to me, ‘Well, I think that’s about it.’ They weren’t going to buy any oil. And…Iran was going to make a deal with us.”
There was much more energy-related content in his speech, but you get the gist: A second Trump presidency would start by reversing as much of the Biden Green New Deal agenda as possible and go from there.
It is safe to say no presidential nominee has ever been as focused on energy as Donald Trump is today. We will see if it pays off for him in November.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
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