Man Who Coined The Nickname ‘Cocaine Mitch’ Announces Third-Party Run For The Presidency

Don Blankenship, a man who formally ran a lucrative coal empire and the person who coined the nickname “Cocaine Mitch” for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, announced on Monday that he’ll be taking his shot at running for the presidency via a third-party ticket.

He’ll seek the White House through the small, but officially recognized Constitution Party and according to The Hill, he began his campaign with an attack on President Donald Trump, saying that the president’s ego interferes with making progress as the United States president.

“President Trump means well, but he simply cannot get it done because he is too busy mending his self-inflicted wounds and tripping over his ego,” Blankenship’s statement read.

Blankenship’s campaign promises include fixing America’s infrastructure, enacting term limits and reducing the costs of health care. He also echoed statements previously used by Trump in 2016, writing that he intends to “flush the swamp” and crack down on illegal immigration, including removing welfare benefits for undocumented persons in America.

The former coal CEO made it abundantly clear that he’s against the two-party Republican and Democrat system and slammed the parties for what he called years of “drama” while claiming that the parties were full of corrupt liars.

Blankenship made headlines after he was convicted of conspiring to violate mine safety violations as the head of West Virgina’s Massey Energy after a mine explosion in 2010 resulted in dozens of deaths and ended up serving one year at Taft Federal prison.

On his campaign website, he claimed he was “falsely convicted of a misdemeanor” and pointed to “misconduct” on the prosecutorial side of the law as the reason he eventually ended up behind bars. Because of his time in prison, he stated a rather unconventional goal for his run for the White House.

“Don will be attempting to be the first person ever to become an occupant of the White House after having been in the ‘big house,'” the statement read.

His recent experience in running for public office was mostly unsuccessful, having run for a West Virginia Senate seat in 2018 and eventually losing in the Republican primary to West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

Blankenship blamed the unsuccessful bid on what he labeled as “smear tactics” by the media and allegations that McConnell directed the National Republican Senatorial Committee to run an organized effort to prevent him from winning. During his 2018 is when he coined the nickname “Cocaine Mitch” as an attack on McConnell.

McConnell’s campaign team would later capitalize on the dark nickname, launching a t-shirt for sale earlier in 2019 that depicted a faceless man in what appeared to be a cloud of cocaine dust. McConnell’s campaign shared the ad on Twitter with the hashtag, “#cocainemitch,” as previously reported by The Inquisitr.