Trump Dragged After Getting Yet Another Meaningless Award To Placate His Fragile Ego

Yet another group has taken advantage of one of the thinnest-skinned individual's fragile ego to manipulate the current President of the United States.

Joining politicians, foreign nations, foreign billionaires, corporations, and international organizations, the coal industry created a new shiny trinket for MAGA Republican President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, they awarded Trump the completely-not-made-up-just-to-appease-the-POTUS "Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal" award.

James Grech, CEO of Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the United States, presented Trump with a goldish (no one tell him it's bronze) trophy of a coalminer complete with headlamp and pick ax. The trophy came from industry lobbyists in the Washington Coal Club.

Grech told Trump during the ceremony:

"We stand here today representing the thousands of coalminers across the country to express our deep gratitude to you, sir, for the actions you’ve taken to support our industry."

The event marked Trump’s signing of an executive order directing the Department of Defense to secure long-term purchase agreements with coal plants for military installations and other "mission-critical facilities."

Trump said of his regressive return to further nonrenewable fossil fuel dependence:

"You've never had a better friend in the Oval Office than me. I'm not an expert in coal, but I've been very good to the people that are. The quality of our coal is supposed to be the finest of anywhere in the world."

"We’re going to be buying a lot of coal through the military now."

He then falsely claimed:

"Under our leadership, we’re becoming a massive energy exporter."

"We’re lifting up our hard-working American miners like nobody has ever done before."

People were embarrassed that it's so easy to manipulate the elderly, cognitively-impaired President.

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According to experts who—unlike Trump—do know about coal, it is still the most polluting and most costly to extract fossil fuel.

During the event, Trump said:

"I don't use the word coal, you know, it needs a PR job, because it got a bad reputation for a while. So we're not allowed to say the word coal anymore. It has to be preceded by beautiful, clean coal."

But just adding words doesn't change reality. "Clean coal" refers to an ineffective, complicated, large-scale system to capture the carbon dioxide generated by burning coal and then either chemically removing the CO2 or injecting the gas deep underground—creating a new environmental hazard.

A return to coal is bad news for both the environment and consumers forced to foot the bill to prop up a dying, outdated industry.