West Virginia State House delegate Josh Holstein, one of many state legislators nationwide who have endorsed former President Donald Trump, told Breitbart News that he “fully” anticipates Trump will win every county in his state in the 2024 presidential election.
Breitbart News Saturday host Matthew Boyle asked Holstein to talk about what Trump did for West Virginia and why he supports the former president in 2024.
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Holstein, who represents West Virginia’s Boone County, explained that Trump fought for the coal workers in his area, unlike Democrats who promote a “globalist climate agenda.”
“Our district has been a coal producing bastion for about 100 years. And with the war on coal and the war on fossil fuels, under the Obama administration, my areas, my communities here, really were devastated,” Holstein explained. “And not only did we lose our jobs and our livelihoods, but we also lost a lot of population, about 50 percent.”
Holstein, just the second Republican to represent Boone County in its history, explained that Trump turned West Virginia into a red state by standing up for coal workers and standing up to the Democrats’ radical climate agenda.
Holstein told Boyle, “Our West Virginia State Legislature was under 88 years of Democratic control consecutively up until 2014. So it’s not like this is a deeply red state that’s always been traditionally Republican, but Donald Trump changed that. And, you know, the folks here that had been so loyal to the Democrat Party over the years had the rug pulled out from underneath them all for a globalist climate agenda.”
Holstein said when Trump made his first rally in West Virginia’s capital, “He said the things that I heard people say at dinner, I’ve heard people say in my family, he asked the questions that so many politicians were scared to ask.”
Holstein added, “But it was the questions that everyday Americans were asking. And as a result, President Trump won every county in West Virginia in 2016, in 2020, both in the primaries and in the general elections. And I fully anticipate that he’ll do the exact same in 2024. I’m proud to support him and help him any way that I can because I believe that our people here in this state need more leadership in the White House, and we have trust and leadership under Trump.”
Boyle noted that Democrats portray themselves as the party that fights for working-class America, but in reality they “are screwing over those working class people who go into those coal mines, who go work in those factories, who go to the working class blue collar jobs across America, they have screwed them over time and time again for the last several decades.”
Holstein believes the reason Democrats had a stronghold over West Virginia for so many years is because West Virginians are “deeply loyal,” but he suspects the red wave will “probably catch up” to Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) soon.
Holstein then highlighted the conservative legislative victories West Virginia’s legislature has accomplished, including abortion restrictions, prohibitions on gender transitions for children, and defending the Second Amendment, among other things.
“I think here and here in West Virginia, we’ve had some of the biggest conservative achievements,” Holstein said. “And oftentimes, I think they get overlooked, because we’re not a swing state or we’re not a very nationally recognized conservative Bastion, but we have really passed a very conservative agenda. We’ve effectively banned all abortions in our state.”
“We’ve protected women’s sports. We’ve also banned gender transition surgeries for minors,” Holstein added. “We’ve instituted the Hope Scholarship Program, which allows state tax dollars to follow the students if they choose some kind of private education or homeschooling, anything like that.”
On the Second Amendment, Holstein said, “And we’ve defended our Second Amendment. We passed the Second Amendment Preservation and Non-commandeering Act, which basically prevents the federal government from coming in, like the ATF and all the other ones, from coming in and using state resources to enforce federal laws. So if there’s any executive order by the president or any unconstitutional gun law passed by Congress, and some kind of federal agency wants to come in and try to seize some of the weapons or charge for a gun crime, then they have to use federal resources. They’re not allowed to use state resources. We’ve also passed campus carry to give, you know, our adults on college campuses the right to defend themselves and to protect themselves.”
He also highlighted the state’s recent tax cuts.
“Our yearly budget’s about 4.8 billion a year, but we passed a tax cut of $800 million, just this past session, which is about a 21 and a quarter personal income tax reduction,” Holstein said. “As well as a property tax exemption for disabled vets and a motor vehicle property tax exemption. So we’re doing a lot of great things in our state, and we have more things coming up soon.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/04/22/exclusive-wv-lawmaker-josh-holstein-i-fully-anticipate-donald-trump-to-win-every-wv-county-in-2024/