President Donald Trump lauded the value of coal as "indestructible stuff” during a Tuesday rally in West Virginia as the EPA signaled its release of a controversial plan to reward coal plants for burning the fossil fuel more efficiently.
"We love clean, beautiful, West Virginia coal," Trump told the Charleston, West Virginia, crowd to cheers and applause. "We love it. And you know, that's indestructible stuff. In times of war, in times of conflict, you can blow up those windmills, they fall down really quick.
"You can blow up those pipelines, and you can do a lot of things to those solar panels. But you know what you can't hurt? Coal. You can do whatever you want to coal."
The president also said the administration is working on "a military plan that's going to be something very special" — an apparent reference to the administration's examination of ways to save coal plants from retiring by making sure they remain operational as a matter of national security, the Washington Examiner reported.