
Trump wants to manipulate regulation to force a taxpayer bailout of pollution-based energy companies. Coal baron Robert Murray recently donated to Trump's reelection efforts and is already seeing his investment pay off.

The Trump administration is preparing a massive bailout of the pollution-causing industry, specifically those who donated millions to support his campaign.

Bloomberg reports that Trump officials are planning to push grid operators to buy electricity from coal and nuclear plants that are out of sync with the move toward cleaner, more reliable energy. The outlet notes that the move would be an "unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets."

A leaked memo Department of Energy, now under the control of secretary Rick Perry (former governor of Texas), shows plans to invoke emergency authority to give an excuse for the scheme.


The memo claims "Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity."

Sara Chieffo, vice president of Government Affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, slammed the proposal in a statement to Shareblue Media.

"The Trump administration is once again bending over backwards to prop up dying, dirty energy sources instead of building the clean energy economy our communities need and deserve," Chieffo said.

If the bailout advances, some of the biggest beneficiaries would be polluters who invested massively to install Trump in the White House.

These figures include coal baron Robert Murray. Murray is the head of Murray Energy Corporation, one of the largest independent operators of coal mines in the country. His company has a horrible safety record and multiple injuries to miners as a result.

He, like Trump, calls climate change "a total hoax."

Murray recently donated $1 million to America First Action, the administration's designated pro-Trump super PAC pushing for his reelection.

Before that Murray spent over $300,000 backing Trump in 2016 and donated $300,000 to Trump's poorly attended inauguration.

Murray has been involved in direct meetings with Perry designed to implement changes in an "action plan" he presented to the administration. The plan was a list of changes to policy and regulations that would benefit the coal industry directly.

Trump has often been a booster of coal polluters. During the campaign he echoed fellow Republicans and their fraudulent claims that President Barack Obama was waging a "war on coal." Trump recently said he had ended the "war on beautiful clean coal" with moves to ease environmental legislation.

Clean energy has been on the rise in America, and as Lara Ettenson, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council recently wrote, clean energy "is the driving force behind job growth" in the energy industry.

Pollutant-based power sources like coal are the past, and the only way the operators in the industry like Murray can continue to be propped up is through a bailout like the one Trump is planning.

Trump wants taxpayer money to be used to keep his top patrons in business, while continuing to churn out toxic gases into the environment. He's engineering a bailout of his cronies, and money for his re-election is likely to come rolling in if he has his way.