Thousands show up for Trump’s first general election event in Pa.

Natural gas

Trump argued that Biden’s proposed regulations for gas and oil production are impacting the effort to make the country energy-independent and also negatively impacting the economy.

“Biden has imposed a savage natural gas export ban that’s putting countless Pennsylvania jobs at risk,” he said. “He’s risking your lives, he’s risking your jobs, but he doesn’t care because all he cares about is the green new scam.”

Pennsylvania is the second top natural gas–producing state in the U.S. So important is the industry to Pennsylvania Senators John Fetterman and Bob Casey that, in a rare move, they broke from the administration and advised President Biden to reconsider a proposed pause on approvals for additional liquefied natural gas plant exports.

“Pennsylvania is an energy state. As the second largest natural gas-producing state, this industry has created good-paying energy jobs in towns and communities across the Commonwealth and has played a critical role in promoting U.S. energy independence,” Fetterman and Casey wrote in a letter.

It wasn’t me

On Monday, jury selection begins in Manhattan, where Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to prevent news of a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to keep their extramarital affair from becoming public.

Trump called the trial a “communist show trial” orchestrated by the president.

“Two days from now, the entire world will witness the commencement of the very first Biden trial,” Trump said in his speech. “They’re all Biden trials. You know that, right?”

Trump also accused the district attorney in that case, Alvin Bragg, and Judge Juan Merchan of colluding with the president to keep him from winning the election, adding that he is “gagged.”

“I’m not allowed to talk,” he said. “They want to take away my constitutional right to talk.”

The former president is prohibited from publicly discussing potential witnesses and jurors in the unprecedented criminal trial of a former president but not barred from speaking to defend himself.

Trump likened the prosecutions to the investigations into his connections with Russia in 2016, saying they amounted to nothing.

“With all of the things they did with millions of pages of study, they found nothing, which makes me perhaps the most honest guy, almost, in the world,” he said.

However, the former president continued his narrative that the last election was stolen from him.

“2020 was rigged,” he said. “It was a disgrace. We can never let it happen again.”