Trump news – live: President jokes about serving third term, rambles ignorantly about wind power and defends baseless Epstein conspiracy theory – The Independent

Donald Trump addressed energy workers in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and joked about calling off the 2020 election and serving a third term, attacking his political opponents including Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren despite the event not being earmarked for campaigning.

Speaking to staff after touring the Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex in Monaca, the president also spread misinformation about wind power (“All of the sudden it stops – the wind and the televisions go off”) and attempted to take credit for the facility’s construction as part of his latest effort to reinvigorate the Rust Belt support that sent him to the White House. He was cheered on by fluorescent-vest-clad workers who were, incidentally, paid to attend by their employers.

But despite Trump’s claims, Shell announced its plans to build the complex in 2012, midway through Barack Obama‘s term in the White House. The complex – nearing completion – will turn the area’s vast natural gas deposits into plastics. The facility is being built in an area hungry for investment and employment, though critics claim it will become the largest air polluter in western Pennsylvania. 

The event was billed as an official White House event, but Trump turned much of it into a campaign-style rally, boasting of achievements he claims as president and assailing his would-be Democratic rivals for the 2020 election. 

“I don’t think they give a damn about Western Pennsylvania, do you?” he prodded the crowd. 

Trump contends that America’s coal, oil and manufacturing are reviving and he deserves the credit. He’s been focusing on his administration’s efforts to increase the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels in defiance of increasingly urgent warnings about climate change. And he’s embracing plastic at a time when the world is sounding alarms over its impact. 

“We don’t need it from the Middle East anymore,” Trump said of oil and natural gas, proclaiming the employees “the backbone of this country.” 

As for the new complex, he declared, “This would have never happened without me and us.” 

Trump’s appeals to blue-collar workers helped him win Beaver County, where the plant is located, by more than 18 percentage points in 2016, only to have voters there turn to Democrats in 2018’s midterm elections. In one of a series of defeats that led to Republicans’ loss of the House, voters sent Democrat Conor Lamb to Congress after the prosperity promised by Trump’s tax cuts failed to materialise. 

Today, the much of the area is still struggling to recover from the shutting of steel plants in the 1980s that sent unemployment to nearly 30 per cent. Former mill towns like Aliquippa have seen their population shrink, though Pittsburgh has lured major tech companies like Google and Uber, fueling an economic renaissance in a city that reliably votes Democratic. 

Trump claimed that his steel and aluminum foreign-trade tariffs have saved the industries and that they are now “thriving,” exaggerating the recovery of the steel industry, particularly when it comes to jobs, which have largely followed pace with broader economic growth. He took credit for the addition of 600,000 US manufacturing jobs. Labour Department figures show that roughly 500,000 factory jobs have been added since his presidency started. 

Manufacturing has also started to struggle anew this year as the administration has intensified its trade war with China and factory production has declined. Pennsylvania has lost 5,600 manufacturing jobs so far this year, according to the Labour Department. 

Additional reporting by AP