Trump Seized On Biden’s Oil Industry Remark. But Was It Actually Damaging?
President Donald Trump seized on Joe Biden’s call for a transition from oil to renewable energy Thursday night, appealing directly to voters in the energy-producing states of Texas, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma to take heed of what his campaign later described as the Democratic nominee’s “pledge to end the oil industry.”
Biden’s actual remark came as something of a verbal stumble amid heated crosstalk. For nearly 12 minutes toward the end of the final presidential debate, he touted union support for his clean-energy jobs plan and toed a nuanced line on fracking, repelling Trump’s attempts to tie him to progressive calls to phase out that drilling practice altogether.
Trump asked Biden: “Would you close down the oil industry?”
“Yes, I would transition from the oil industry,” said Biden, adding: “The oil industry pollutes significantly. ... It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”
Scientifically, that was not controversial. Virtually all climate research indicates that to keep global temperatures from reaching catastrophic new heights, oil use must be dramatically phased down. But in the bitter final days of the election, Biden seemed to deliver Trump and his industry allies material for attack ads aimed at workers already struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The oil industry’s biggest lobby hit back quickly. “We aren’t going anywhere,” Mike Sommers, chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a press release after the debate.
At least two vulnerable House Democrats from oil-producing regions condemned the remark.
“Here’s one of the places Biden and I disagree,” Rep. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.) wrote in a tweet. “We must stand up for our oil and gas industry.”
Another freshman Democrat, Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.), urged Biden not to “demonize a single industry.”
In Monessen, Pennsylvania, a former steel-mill city an hour’s drive southeast of Pittsburgh, Mayor Matt...
