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Welcome Back, Mr. President

President Donald Trump will be in Wheeling today for a private campaign fundraising event. No doubt it will be well attended and quite lively.

And it is probable a group of protesters will be present outside the event. Good. Ours is a culture in which dissent is an integral part of the political process. Whether one agrees with demonstrators or not, their very presence says something important about how we Americans handle our affairs.

We agree, in short, to disagree.

But Trump won election in 2016 by a larger margin in West Virginia than in any other state. That was because many voters felt his opponent had turned her back on us, while Trump was eager to listen to our complaints about government.

We know for a fact that he kept the promises he made to West Virginians. The “war on coal” prosecuted with such vigor by the previous administration was reexamined under Trump. Environmental Protection Agency initiatives launched solely to close coal mines and coal-fired power plants have been and will be reversed.

So the bottom line is that Trump kept his pledges to Mountain State residents. Some think he was wrong to do so, but many in our state give him credit simply because his promises were not empty ones.

West Virginia is a small, rather politically unimportant state in the eyes of many politicians on the national stage. We are right in the middle of “flyover country,” as far as they are concerned.

Trump’s concern with our welfare, his willingness to go against the popular grain to keep his word and yes, his visits to West Virginia are pleasing digressions from political “conventional wisdom,” in many Mountain State residents’ minds.

It is no wonder, then, that Trump is coming back to West Virginia. Welcome, Mr. President.

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