Bill Clinton, who was campaigning for his wife, made a campaign stop in Wyoming on Tuesday and talked about a variety of topics, including Medicaid expansion and energy production in the West. Local news station CBS 5 reported that there were 500 people in attendance.
During his campaign speech, Clinton spoke about the importance of clean energy and the effort to move away from coal energy. Coal is a hot topic for the people of Wyoming, and Clinton was met with protesters, some of whom were coal miners who had lost their jobs.
"Hillary had in one of her speeches said specifically she intends to put coal mines and coal miners out of work," Yvette Land said. "We have families. We have kids and grandkids that rely upon the coal industry."
At a CNN town hall in March, Hillary Clinton said that if she were elected president, she would put coal mines and coal miners out of business.
"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, right, Tim? And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people," Clinton said.
Clinton made her gaffe when she was asked by a member of the audience about creating jobs in America.
Another protester at the Wyoming stop was a coal miner who had lost his job and said Democrats have an agenda to hurt the coal industry.
"We don't need politicians picking and choosing who wins and who loses," Scott Land said.
Clinton’s campaign surrogates have jumped to her defense, pointing out that the candidate’s full response at the CNN town hall expressed concern for miners’ well-being and proposed injecting $30 billion in federal money into depressed coal mining regions.
A day after her gaffe, while campaigning in South Carolina, Clinton ignored a question about her answer to destroy coal jobs.