Boone Pickens: This election 'scares the hell' out of him

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, the founder of BP Capital, says the 2016 election “scares the hell” out of him.

Speaking at the Concordia Summit in New York, Pickens, 88, remarked that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump “are the strangest two candidates” he has ever seen.

Pickens, who first voiced his support for Trump in May, called the Republican candidate “a peculiar guy.” He admitted that he didn’t think Trump would “get off the ground” when he first announced his candidacy last year.

“I really didn’t think he was serious that he was running for president,” Pickens said. “He came in at a time that seems to be perfect for his skills and that is — the country is fed up with what we have.”

Pickens, a legend in the US oil industry and author of “The Pickens Plan,” which aims to reduce the US’s dependence on OPEC oil by using natural gas and other American resources, noted that the US has the cheapest energy in the world and Trump can use that to his benefit.

“I’m surprised Trump hasn’t picked up on that,” he said. “We’ll rebuild the economy on the back of cheap energy.”

He added that Clinton “doesn’t like energy” or “fossil fuels.”


Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance.

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