Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said this week her recent line about putting coal miners out of business was a “misstatement” that was out of context, and she said she’s sorry it gave people an excuse to be upset with her.
“I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context from what I meant because I have been talking about helping coal country for a very long time, and I did put out a plan last summer,” Mrs. Clinton said at a roundtable in West Virginia.
“It was a misstatement because what I was saying is that the way things are going now, [we] will continue to lose jobs. That’s what I meant to say, and I think that that seems to be supported by the facts,” she said.
“I didn’t mean that we were going to do it,” she said. “What I said was that is going to happen unless we take action to try to help and prevent it.”
A man had asked Mrs. Clinton how she could say she’s going to put coal miners out of work “and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend.”
“I don’t mind anybody being upset or angry — that’s a perfect right for people to feel that way,” she said. “I do feel a little bit sad and sorry that I gave folks the reason or the excuse to be so upset with me, because that is not what I intended at all.”
Mrs. Clinton’s original comments had come up at a CNN town hall in March.
“For example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business … and we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people,” she said at the town hall.
Mrs. Clinton had been asked to make the case to poor whites living in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama who vote Republican why they should vote for her, based on economic policies.
“Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories,” she said.
“Now, we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on,” Mrs. Clinton said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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