Donald LeonBlankenship is an American business executive and (unsuccessful) politicalcandidate. Blankenship is most famous as Chairman and CEO of the Massey EnergyCompany from 2000 until anexplosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in 2010 killed 29 miners, cost him hisposition and landed him in jail for conspiring to willfully violate mine safetyand health standards. He tried to run on theConstitution Party ticket in 2018 on a platformconsisting mostly of opposing mining safety and environmental measures, as wellas claiming that he was innocent of his crimes and would have walked freewere it not for dirty politics and conspiracies. Blankenship is otherwise anabsolutely horrible human being, to the point of functioning quite well asa straightforward parody of a cartoon villain.

 

Hispolitical campaigns have to a large extent targeted environmental “crazies”and “greeniacs”. Blankenship is of course aclimate change denier (“I don’t believe climate change is real”,saying “Why should we trust a report by the United Nations? The UnitedNations includes countries like Venezuela, North Korea and Iran” – onecould point out that these countries also believe ingravity, but thatmight give him ideas). According to Blankenship “the environmental movementisn’t a great cause, it’s a great business”, as opposed to his own coalindustry. In 2018, he modified himself a little, admitting that “climatechange is probably a fact” but thatAmerican-made climate change isnot, it’s just China’s contributions that actually lead to climate change.

 

He alsorejects mainstream views on mine safety, arguing against governmentairheads telling mining companies what to do: mining companies themselves areway better suited to the task and should have less oversight: “Washingtonand state politicians have no idea how to improve miners’ safety.” (Thequote is from 2009, the year before the Upper Big Branch explosion.)

 

During his2018 campaign, Blankenship tried topromote himself as “Trumpier than Trump” but complained that theestablishment was pushing misinformation about him because they feltthreatened. His campaigntargeted in particular Mitch McConnell, for instance bystating that McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao wasa“China person” (when asked whetherthe comment was racist, Blankenship said itwasn’t, becausethe Chinese are not a race: “Races are Negro, WhiteCaucasian, Hispanic, and Asian”. So there you go.) He also got into somecontroversy overrepeatedly calling MitchMcConnell “cocaine Mitch”, relying a conspiracy theory based onconflating animpressive number of degrees of separation (Trump himselfendorsedBlankenship’s opponent).

 

Diagnosis:A piece of absolutely putrid rot. One of the vilest pieces of garbage alivetoday. Absolutely everything, on every possible level, is wrong with thisexcuse for a person.