Once I got into politics, I saw the real fight, where big money controls everything, and where politicians care more about campaign contributions than the people they're supposed to represent.
We're not really a state. We're a colony. Everything we've ever had - timber, coal - it's all been extracted out of our state. Our people have been here and have worked in those industries, and they remained poor, but the people outside of our state that are the ones that come and get the timber, get the coal, have become billionaires.
We need to diversify our economy, but I also think we still have a future in coal.
When I hear Ivanka Trump saying how she looks forward to working side by side with Gen. Kelly - a guy who's got 40 years' worth of experience leading troops all across the world - and she makes handbags, come on.
The reason why the Democratic Party fell from grace is because they become nothing more than elitist. That was it. Goldman Sachs - that's who they were.
Stand up for our sick. Stand up for our veterans. Stand up for the elderly. Protect things like Social Security. Stop allowing people to stick their hands in the cookie jar. Create opportunities for people who live in poverty to elevate themselves out of poverty with a hand up, not a hand out. That's what being a Democrat is!
You can't take a coal miner making $95,000 a year, the only work in these parts where you can support a family without having to hold down three jobs at once... and tell them, 'You can make minimum wage,' or, 'We can give you job training for jobs that don't exist in West Virginia.'
We have elected officials who say they're going to run for office to serve the people. But in reality, they legislate themselves into wealth. They go into office, and after one, two terms, they're worth millions upon millions of dollars, and that has to stop.
My military service has been attacked by people who have never picked up a rifle and manned a post.
If all you have is coal, that's the only thing that we have. Don't hate the coal miner for trying to get the only decent job that we have in West Virginia that can allow them to feed their family.
The coal miners are working. But there's more than just coal miners in West Virginia.
I come from a family of coal miners.
It's so easy to steal from the bottom 99 percent, but try stealing from the top one percent, and they put you under the jail.
When President Kennedy come to West Virginia, he spoke about West Virginia and the people that gave the people here pride. And my family, my father remembers when President Kennedy was in Logan County and at places like the smokehouse, standing on chairs, talking to people.
Unions have been under attack for quite some time, and I think a lot of the jobs that we need to create in this country need to be union jobs. People want to be able to get a job that they can rely on to feed their family and pay their bills.
I'm saying right now that if you're going to serve this nation in a federal position, you need to start proving that you're willing to sacrifice first. I'm saying... that people are sick and tired of the millionaires running the system.
I lived in a bubble: my whole entire military career where I thought that everything was perfect. And I thought that every time we went overseas and we fought for this country, we were doing it because we were trying to get other people a sliver of the greatness that we have here in the United States of America.
I know coal is dirty, but that's all we got. So as much as I'd love to have clean energy - solar panels everywhere - right now, all we have is coal. The people I love, and the people that I grew up with, that's their livelihood, and I don't want to see them starve.
I believe that if we are going to create jobs in this country, then let's create jobs that will absolutely put the working-class people at work to the point where they have one job. They don't have to work three because they have to work Wendy's, McDonald's, and Walmart to survive.
I cannot sit here and say I was beaten by Carol Miller. Because Carol Miller did not show up. She did not debate me. She basically avoided everything and just said, 'I'm with Trump, I'm with Trump.' And sadly, that's apparently a victory here in a place like southern West Virginia.
