OU’s largest donor, billionaire Harold Hamm, spoke at President Donald Trump’s Durant rally Thursday evening.
Hamm recently made a $150 million donation to OU, the largest single gift in university history, which led to the renaming of what is now the Harold Hamm Health Campus.
Hamm, who took the stage before Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei, said he was the first from Oklahoma to support Trump’s bid for president, and he hasn’t regretted it.
Hamm said that before Trump’s first presidential run the two planned a meeting at Trump Tower in New York. He said Trump was interested in what Hamm calls Oklahoma’s “energy renaissance,” which he credits to horizontal drilling. It was there that Trump told Hamm he intended to run for president.
Hamm said Trump cares about the same things Oklahomans do.
“That’s what we share with him: hard work, perseverance, all the things that made Oklahoma great — that's him. And that’s what he’s built,” Hamm said. “That’s why he wanted to make America great again. Nobody thought he could do it. I did.”
This story was edited by Larkin Bock.
