Squirrel whisperer Robert Murray is not just the owner of the largest private coal company in the United States; he’s also the number one supplier of something even more important: prop coal miners used in Donald Trump rallies and ads. Murray has repeatedly forced his employees to appear in “Trump Digs Coal” spots and provided hard-hat-wearing miners to stand by as Trump makes claims that he “ended the war on coal.” Murray is also the man whose unauthorized mining practices directly led to the deaths of six miners in a 2007 accident. But now there’s a reason for Trump and Murray to feel even closer—they’ve both managed to drive their firms into bankruptcy.
Despite Trump’s vaunted “deregulation” of the coal industry—which included allowing coal companies to dump more waste into streams and rivers used for water supplies; relaxing the rules on toxic coal slurry containment; eliminating regulations on greenhouse gases; and chopping in half the contributions coal companies make to supporting miners afflicted with black lung, despite a record increase in the worst form of the disease—and despite Trump making changes specifically targeted to help Murray, it still wasn’t enough. Because, as Bloomberg reports, Murray Energy has gone down.
Murray has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under a mounting $2.7 billion in debt, declining sales, and no real prospect of any improvements in the future. However, there’s no reason to think that Murray is about to disappear. The top publicly traded coal companies in the U.S. have all passed through Chapter 11 over the last few years, and all but a handful have come back leaner, not-cleaner, and both free from major obligations to miners and shorn of debts to both suppliers and states. Murray has already reached a deal on a $350 million bridge loan to take his company through restructuring.
With both natural gas and renewable energy now costing less to build from scratch than it takes to merely maintain a coal-fired power plant, electricity providers are retiring their aging coal plants at an accelerating rate. Trump’s actions can’t reverse that. Trump also hasn’t done a thing to secure miners’ jobs, safety, or health, or to protect the funds that are supposed to be used to reclaim the land when mining is complete. But his deregulations are allowing guys like Murray to skim every last penny from a failing industry.
Expect Murray to continue propping up the myth of Donald Trump, coal man—while both Trump and Murray laugh at ordinary people who aren’t protected from their own actions behind the sweet wall of corporate fronts.