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Congressman Massie Trusts Trump to 'Work On Real Problems'

Gage Skidmore
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Flickr (Creative Commons License)

Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie says he’s confident a Donald Trump ticket with Mike Pence as vice president will make for an effective presidency.

The 4th District Representative is attending the Republican National Convention as Trump seals his party’s nomination.

He spoke to reporter Matt Laslo for Ohio Valley Resource Wednesday.

Some of Trumps critics have noted a lack of specific details in his policy speeches and whether he has enough political experience for the office. But Massie says that’s where Indiana Governor and former Congressman Pence can be useful.

“Because it will make, hopefully, a lot of the Congressmen or Senators that were uneasy about whether Trump could work with Congress or not, sort of put them at ease, once we see a conservative who has the experience of working in the legislative branch," said Massie. "I trust Trump to... to work on real problems. I think he’s a problem-solver at heart, he’s not into the nitty-gritty details, but I think Mike Pence would be. If Trump needs to relate a solution into legislation, I think that’s where Pence can help."

Trump speaks tonight (Thursday) to cap off the final night of the convention. Massie says this is where he thinks the businessman and reality show star’s more personable qualities will come out.  

"If people listen to his whole speech and they don’t reduce it to sound bytes, I think you’re gonna find out more about what Donald Trump is," said Massie. "And, you know, I was concerned until I got to spend an hour in a room with Donald Trump, when he came to meet Congress, and what I found out is he’s not as arrogant as he’s been portrayed. He’s confident, but not arrogant and hopefully that will come through and, and aspects like that.”

Turning attention to local matters, Massie says while he’s opposed to putting earmarks into legislative budgets, he thinks there is some good to having guidance, like identifying which types of projects could need federal help.

"There’s a good argument to be made to let Congress allocate the money instead of just advocating that to the governors and to the president," said Massie. "But we did do something here in the recent transportation bill that’s gonna help, we took ten billion dollars and dedicated it to freight corridors, so we’re still giving it to the states and they can still decide but we’re saying, ‘look, if this is not a major freight corridor this is not qualify for this 10 billion dollar pool of money and that will help us with something like the Brent Spence Bridge ‘cause its one of the major freight corridors in the country.”

Massie says, in terms of energy and environment policy, getting Donald Trump in the White House is exciting for Republicans.

"We need regulatory relief. This is the exciting thing about getting a Republican in the White House, everything that Obama has done to hurt coal has primarily been without Congress. So it can be undone, literally in the first week, and take the pail, the cloud that’s hanging over coal in terms of the regulation and undo that immediately, and I think you’ll see a resurgence.”
 
After the RNC, Trump gears up for the general election battle against Hillary Clinton, who will accept her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention next week.

Rob Canning is a native of Murray, KY, a 2015 TV Production grad of Murray State. At MSU, he served as team captain of the Murray State Rowing Club. Rob's goal is to become a screenwriter, film director or producer and looks to the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie for inspiration. He appreciates good music, mainly favoring British rock n' roll, and approves of anything with Jack White's name on it. When not studying, rowing or writing, Rob enjoys spending his free time with a book or guitar.
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