“MAINE FAMILIES ARE PAYING THE PRICE!” Troy Jackson Blasts Trump Over Rising Costs

Well, thank you, brothers and sisters, for being here. I really, really appreciate it. And obviously for Senator Markey coming up. You know, I haven't been in this this awful long. I think today is day 99. Thank you very much. But Senator Markey has, you know, been right there every step of the way. I tell you, one of the hardest working U.S. Senators I've seen so far. I mean, and. And obviously, it's, you know, thank you so much for being here, Senator. Before we get going, I want to thank Representative Sophie Warren, soon-to-be State Senator, for a great... I see Representative Kuhn over here, which... Murphy, I'm sorry. Look, I did that again. Well, Representative Murphy, I'm sorry. And which is, you know, obviously great that she's here. I don't know if I... Any other House or Senate members? Okay, and I know that the former representative Sean Flaherty is here running for town council. I'm sorry. Just want to make sure that we always hold up House and Senate members here in Maine. Thank We got Hannah, Matt Dunlap, Shelley, I mean you know this is making sure that we have a real great group of people that are going to win. Uh, and change the world. And that's what this race for me is about. Um, you know, I, I, I'm going to be real quick here so we can get into the questions, but you know, I'm, I met my first billionaire you. when I was in seventh grade and it didn't go very well then. And, and ever since then, I've watched power and influence hold people back, uh, you know, make decisions that only was good for them, a handful of people. And, you know, I'm not trying to. You know, dramatize this or anything like that. I mean, right now, what I'm seeing across the state is people that know that government is broken and they want change. You know, I spoke with someone this morning that actually had. Thank Their son held up by ICE and detained for 48 hours, and the only way that he was able to get released was to self-deport himself to Canada. I mean, he's a Maine citizen, and that's what's going on right now. You know, people that know that fuel prices are out of hand you. and they're going to get worse, people that know that, you know, we're going to lose $3 to $5 billion in our health care, that we've lost SNAP benefits. These are the real, real issues that Mainers are dealing with. I mean, it's worse than ever, and they know that, you know, we can have a change that makes government work for everyday people, that the billionaire class is not going to get what they want if we change the people that are, you know, capitulating to Donald Trump. And for me, I... For me, I've been waiting for a time like this for a long time because I don't think government works for the people I care most about. I'm excited to work with somebody like Senator Markey. I think besides the fact that we take this government away from Donald Trump, And restore it back in the hands of people. We also push the Democratic Party to do things it hasn't done forever that would make people's lives better. And that's what I'm really excited about, too, is we have a real opportunity to make this world work for people that deserve it. You know, people that know. Oh, yeah. So anyways, I'll stop there. And thank you so much, everyone, for coming, especially Representative Murphy. Photography. Ha, ha, ha, ha. But seriously, thank you, everyone, for being here. I really appreciate it. Beautiful. Thank you, thank you. Three days left to go. So thank you, Representative Murphy. Thank you, Sophie. Great job. Thank you, Bob. And, yeah, I came up here, actually, to Biddeford, Maine just six weeks ago after ICE murdered Juan Guerrero. In cold blood, in Biddeford, and I was there with hundreds of people out and concerned about what had transpired on sacred ground here where the American Revolution began, which was a complete and total disgrace, all orchestrated out of the White House, all orchestrated out of Donald Trump's complete and total cavalier indifference to the constitutional rights of everyone in this country. So I saw that, I could see how people were rising up, just referring to what you said earlier about ICE. But let me just tell you, it's getting cold. It gets colder in Maine earlier than just about any place. And what I've been hearing here in Maine so far is... Just three issues. The price of home heating oil is too high. The price of home heating oil is too high. The price of home heating oil is too high. So can you speak to that, Troy, and what its impact is upon the people of this great state? Well, I think everyone out here understands, but I think we're at 83% higher than we were just last year in heating oil. And that's... You know, as much as Senator Collins and Donald Trump would like to make it about renewable energy and things like that, that's directly because of the Iran war. I mean, that's when the prices started blowing up. And it means that people this winter are going to have an incredibly hard time to keep their home heated. And they'll probably have to miss something else or it won't happen at all. You know, I don't know how many people I've spoke to over the years that have, like, $1,100 or $1,200 Social Security benefit for the month. And now you're talking about, you know, $1,800, $2,000 to fill your tank. And I guarantee you there's months this winter that that won't go all month. And that's the real reality. And, again, why did that happen and why did LAHEAP funding happen? Because Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing with the military and because billionaires needed more money. And that's what we're going to have here. And it's not just, I mean, the heating is the worst part by far. You know, you have the fishing industry, the farming, and the forestry industry. Diesel prices are the highest they've ever been. They have no ability to make that up. And I'm really, I know for a fact that we're going to lose many businesses because they can't make that up. There's no way that they can. Some of them have their homes tied into that for collateral. It's a real problem, and I don't understand, like, what we're doing there, why. Other than making money for oil executives. You know, this is a real mess, and we've got to get out of Iran and get some of those clean energy jobs going again so that we can actually get off this boom and bust cycle of these wars and, you know, oil prices fluctuating like this. Yeah, so we just saw that ExxonMobil and the other oil companies are recording their largest profits in history. The oil industry, fossil fuel industry. And the rich are getting richer. Everyone else is paying a home heating bill, gasoline bill, electricity bill, and we know that in Venezuela, he's down there bragging about his oil deals, Trump, over in the Iran war, it's all about oil. Um, and, but... Can you just talk a little bit here about what ultimately the impact is as these oil company executives report that they are right now going to be in a situation where if ever there were windfall profits at the expense of ordinary families, that it is occurring right now on November 1st of 2026 in the state of Maine. Yeah, I mean, I think Trump talked about this before he got into... ...office this last time, that if, you know, they helped him out, helped him out in his campaign, he'd return the favor, and it certainly seems like this is what he's doing, returning the favor, because they're making obscene profits, you know, we have, you know, people, I mean, Senator Collins and her husband have stocks in Phillips 66, so, I mean, that's going up. I mean, and she had a chance five times that she voted for the Iran war before she started voting against it, but now here we are. And it obviously, you know, the people that have lost their lives going there are the number one thing. You know, that's going to be a high bar when I'm in the U.S. Senate to send somebody else's kids into war, especially I'm not going to send them there for oil, I'll tell you that. Thank you, God. But, I mean, Maine is a cold weather state, and, you know, I joked that up my way, we have nine months of winter, and it's a joke, but it is, I mean, you know, we're dependent on oil for heating, you know, heat pumps have been great, but, you know, in the coldest days, they don't furnish, and people need to have oil. Eventually, I expect we'll have that technology, but we don't right now. And it's really something to mess with people's lives. You know. You know, it's not when you lose your heat, obviously you have the opportunity to freeze, but, you know, water pipes freeze and bust, and that's a whole other mess. And, you know, I've dealt with that so much in my life. I know what it's like for people. We just shouldn't have to worry about something like that, you know, as simple as heating your home. I agree with you 100%. When I was a boy, my mother and father would take us for one week on vacation to Old Orchard Beach. And that's where we'd go. My father's from New Hampshire. My father loved cold ocean. He loved it. And he could swim the entire length of the beach back and forth. In the ice-cold water in June here in Ourchin. Thank you. And we know that the fossil fuel industry, they're running kind of a science experiment in the Gulf of Maine. It's getting warmer. The lobsters, they love, the lobsters, like my father, love cold water. And as it gets warmer and warmer out there in the ocean, Can you talk a little bit, as a lobsterman, about what is happening and what we have to do in order to protect your industry? Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, working with the lobster industry a lot, I've heard that a bunch, how, you know, lobsters aren't there. They're moving further north to get to the colder water. We were just out with Senator Cantwell Friday, hauling some lobsters, show her the industry too. Thank you. It is, it's a real problem. And, you know, I think that for us to get off fossil fuel to try and help, you know, climate change, You know, we worked on that a lot as a legislature. I mean, we had made sure here in Maine that we had the opportunity to do offshore wind. We made sure that the lobster industry was protected because we were going to go outside of the 40-mile line. We also, you know, passed a bill in utilities to do the northern Maine transmission line, which I think is a real opportunity here for Maine because, you know, States like yours obviously have the same climate goals, and you need energy, and I think you're going to come to Maine to get it, and I'm going to charge you a lot for it. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And I'm just going to introduce myself right now. I've offered to help moderate the questions. I'm Maureen Druin, Executive Director of Maine Conservation Voters, and I'm thrilled that the National League of Conservation Voters has endorsed Troy Jackson for the U.S. Senate. I've worked with Troy for years in the legislature and also with Sophie Warren, and I'm just so grateful for their leadership. So thank you so much. And I don't want to interrupt any questions from the wonderful Senator, and thank you so much for your leadership. But I do have some audience questions here. Would you like me to go to those? Sure. Okay, great. So just cutting to the chase, Troy, for undecided voters, What is the most important thing for these voters to know about you as they decide who to vote for on Tuesday? And this person writes, good luck. Thank you very much. . . Well, thanks for that question. . Thank . . I mean, I think there's this real misconception . . with a lot of people out here that, you know, . . . if you replace Senator Collins, . . we won't be getting the federal funding and stuff like you . . . that, which is totally inaccurate. . . . I think Senator Markey probably talked that too. very . . I mean, first off, I think it's pretty clear that Senator Collins, . . . . if she was to win this . much. race, she would be in the minority. . So she's not going to chair the Appropriations Committee. But even still. The amount of money that she's brought into Maine is a pittance compared to what we're losing because of her votes. Thank you. And people have to understand that. I mean, $3 to $5 billion in the big, beautiful bill for health care. I mean, we have a $12 billion budget in Maine. I mean, we're not going to make up $3 to $5 billion. I mean, people are going to go without. Hospitals are going to be challenged, if not overrun. And we've lost heating assistance money. We lost SNAP benefits. I mean, this is all money that went back into our economy that's gone. And so what, what do I want people to know? Well, first off, I want you to know that government's going to get better if I win this, because I don't care about Donald Trump and I don't care about the billionaires and they do. And the one thing that I've always remembered is how Angry and frustrated I was when government didn't work for me, didn't work for my family, didn't work for my community, and I've never forgotten that. And I'm never, I don't want anyone else that I actually represent to look at me and think the same, I did the same thing to them. And so for me, delivering is going to be the number one goal. Constituent service is going to be the number one goal. So Troy, if I can, Troy, in the quote, unquote, big, beautiful bill, Trump cut Medicaid by $1 trillion, he cut the Affordable Care Act subsidies by $300 billion, eliminated the tax breaks for wind and solar, slashed educational funding for kids who need it the most, and then used all that money for a trillion dollar tax break for millionaires and billionaires. Can you talk about what the impact on Maine is to have those kinds of programs in jeopardy? Yeah, well, like I said, I mean, we're going to see more birthing centers closed, more, I mean, possibly hospitals, nursing homes. I mean, like I said, the state can't make that up, and we're already struggling with getting more money in education so that, you know, property taxes don't blow up like they are. I mean, we did universal school meals here in Maine, And because of the... cuts the SNAP benefits, if we want to keep the universal school meal program, we're probably going to have to charge more in property tax, which is unfair, but I mean, either way, it's a lose-lose situation if we cut, you know, universal school meals or if we raise property taxes on people, and that's because Donald Trump and Susan Collins and the rest of the Republicans prioritized Elon Musk over our kids and over our property taxpayers. Thank you. So we have a question about... Data centers and the proliferation of data centers and how energy hungry they are and how they require a number of natural resources. And there's also this proposal to put data centers on public land. So can you just talk a little bit about corporate responsibility, both for data centers and also what's happening to America's public lands? Well, I mean, this state obviously. That depends on tourism, depends on our public lands, and you know we have some unbelievable places. I mean here, I mean this is probably not, but you know these marshes are unbelievable. Acadia National Park, I mean up my way, Allagash Waterway, I mean you know we have some unbelievable things in the state, and we depend on them, we depend on people to come, enjoy them, we Depend on people to recreate on them. And from what I understand, you know, Trump is taking some of that money from there, diverting some of that money so he can do the ballroom and he can fix. Fix, fix. The reflecting pool, you know, and I guess there is a proposal to put data centers on some of the public land, which is idiotic. So, I mean, I think that's a big part of what they've refused to regulate data centers. I mean, I don't, I'm sure Senator Markey feels the same. I don't want billionaires writing the rules on data centers or on AI, because I know what that's going to be like. And when... When data centers come into communities, they just consume vast amounts of electricity. There could be a thousand megawatt data center. Well, if you think of, for our purposes, the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, it would consume all of the electricity from the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. One data center. Just think of that. And what is the impact if a data center is coming in and gobbling up all that electricity in terms of the cost for everyone else? And their electricity bills at their kitchen tables as they're trying to figure it out. And the same thing is true for the pollution that might go up. If they're not using renewable or nuclear power, they're using natural gas. They're using coal-burning plants. It leads to more pollution, more asthmas in people. And the amount of water they have to consume, it needs a lot of water as well. That comes out of communities. It has a tremendous impact. So we just can't allow these... Billionaire tech guys to be in some kind of witness protection program where they're not testifying before Congress, where they're coming in and they're being made accountable for what their revolution that's making them trillionaires is going to have as an impact upon ordinary families. And so that's really on the ballot this year. Are we going to have those hearings? Are we going to pass the legislation that ensures that we have accountability in terms of how AI affects? Privacy of kids, how it affects workers in the factories in which they work. Are they just going to be turned into robots or automatons? The impact which it is having upon our environment. Uh, uh... It's all on the ballot. And right now, there are no federal safeguards that have been put in place. And the industry, they want to... Pass a federal law to say there can be no state laws either. Just to give them a free path to do whatever they want in communities. All of that is on. Troy. No, I mean, Representative Murphy and Representative Warren's point, they actually passed the bill of moratorium here for data centers in Maine. Did a great job. Unfortunately, it didn't override, we couldn't override Governor's veto. But I mean, And that's what they will say. Well, you can't do this on the state level. It's got to be done on the federal level. But then they argue that you can't do it on the federal level. I mean, they don't want any regulations. And like you said, as far as being on the ballot, it's on the ballot. It's on the ballot. And it's also on our TV right now because, you know, these people are spending money to make sure that Susan Collins gets reelected so that they continue to have no regulations. And I've been very clear. I mean, AI has a place. But we want to make sure workers are protected. We want to make sure their environment is protected. We want to make sure that there's safeguards into how far this can go because you've probably studied this more than I have at this point. I mean, there are some real scary things out there from some very qualified people about what AI could do to our society if we don't have those safeguards. Yeah, we need to make sure. We need to make sure that AI... ...doesn't substitute for a human being in making decisions on launch of nuclear weapons. We need to make sure that it's human beings and not AI that are deciding how these biopathogens can be accessed. So there's safeguards all across the book that we're going to have to put in place, and we're going to have to do so soon. So to a certain extent, Trump and Elon Musk and his AI, you know, Billionaire buddies, they're all on the ballot. They're on the ballot. Are they going to be forced to have the guardrails, the protections for every other family? When the automotive industry started, there were no airbags. There were no seatbelts. The auto industry didn't want to put it in. But society said, we want safeguards for people. As they're in these vehicles driving around. And they're saying the same thing right now about AI and its impact on the safety for families for the 21st century. So thank you. Great, thank you. So we have another question here about Congress as it relates to the environment and climate. So the question from the audience is, Congress has a responsibility to act as a check and balance to the executive branch. Given the damage this administration has done to the Environmental Protection Agency, science, climate work, the rule of law, and others, what will you do to hold sitting Republicans accountable for their failures to do their job? Well between Chris Wright The Secretary of Energy, Doug Burgum, the Secretary of Interior, Lee Zeldin, the EPA Administrator, that's not a cabinet, that's a cocktail. That's just an extension of the oil and gas barons that are right now reaping the largest profits in history. And again, it's the people sitting here today, they're paying the price. That is a tax on you. That's a tax on your families. As Troy was just saying about home heating oil bills, if it costs $750 to fill your home heating oil tank once, and it goes up 83%, you're not paying $1,400 to fill it once. In Maine, you have to fill that tank more than once. So if you pay it twice, that's a tax. That's a tax of upwards of a doubling of what you would have to pay and could be between $1,000 and $2,000 more that you have to pay than you had to pay last winter. And when you look at the price of gasoline, if it's up $1.30, $1.40, $1.50, every time you're filling up the tank, it might as well be Trump at the pump looking at you. As you're looking at that price, huh? That's Trump at the pump. You're paying that bill, too. You're paying it for the electricity bill that you're paying as well. So we just need to ensure that we're making all of that cabinet-slash-cocktail accountable, that we're having the hearings, that we're making it clear to the American people that this is a policy which, yeah, worsens... A climate change, but it also creates an affordability crisis. You know, the people are getting tipped upside down at the pump and having money shaken out of their pockets by the oil companies. And they're smiling all the way to the bank. So that's really, from my perspective, what has to happen. And we have to have a Democratic majority if we're going to make them accountable. Troy, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is the one thing I can assure people that we can definitely get done, is we can take Congress back. I mean, that, I mean, it's like the total abdication of your job as a U.S. Senator or a Congress person. Thank That you have oversight. I mean, that's what, you know, in Maine, in the Maine legislature, I mean, that's what we would do. It didn't matter if it was Democrat or Republican. you It was about making sure that the laws were upheld. It was making sure that we vetted candidates. And if there was something wrong that happened, very that we brought people in to make sure that the public knew that we were on their side. much. And right now, like, it's just totally whitewashing whatever Donald Trump wants. I mean, one of these debates that I had with Senator Collins, You know, she actually said that tariffs are a function of Congress. And I said, yes, that's absolutely right. And you've given it up to Donald Trump. Just like so. So, I mean, that's the one thing that I know that with the president that will probably veto, you know, many, many things. That's the one thing I know for certain that I can promise people is that we can do oversight. You know, we can hold people accountable. We can vet those candidates. We can be a functioning government, which we don't have right now. I mean, no way in hell. Thank you. Thank you so much. Could I ask you, Troy, you know, in the United States Constitution, they made it very clear in Article 1. Article 1 is the Congress. Article 2 is the presidency. Up here, if you remember, I don't want to go back too far. Maine was part of Massachusetts, as you know. And the revolution began here, in Maine and Massachusetts. And it began just by saying, very simply, no taxation without representation. And so they put the power to tax in Article 1, because tariffs are a tax. We're close to Canada, too, in Massachusetts, but we're not as close as Maine is in terms of the impact of tariffs as a tax on people in Maine. So can you talk about that, how the tariffs, the taxes, are impacting the people in Maine? Well, I mean, I don't think the framers of our Constitution ever imagined somebody like Donald Trump. But they certainly understood what was, you know, possible. And that's what I think is happening. I mean, he's putting tariffs on things that, you know, Congress can't do anything about because Republicans won't and you don't have the majority. And he knows when those tariffs are going on. He knows when they're going off. I'm sure that he or other people close to him are playing the stock market. And that is really, in my mind, why this is happening. And, you know, he can take things off like we've seen with road salt, which, you know, was great, but you can't eat road salt. So. But I think. This is really hurting people up and down the state and across the country, people that can't get aluminum, people that can't get parts out of Canada, people that can't have their products go into Canada. I mean, the forest industry in my area almost... All depends on wood going to Canada. Farmers depend on fertilizer coming back into Maine. Fishing is the same thing. I mean, and parts for most of the equipment we use today all comes out. Tourism is non-existent in many parts of the state. Cross-border shopping. I mean, this is a real, real problem for us. And we picked a fight with Canada, of all people, one of our closest allies and trade partners. Subscribe to One India and never miss an update. Download the One India app now.