Post from Truth Social

Here today is Michael Coppi, a small business owner who runs a dry cleaner and is struggling to get by because of what Kamala has done to his business. They've destroyed small businesses in this country. Michael, please. Thank you. We have the opportunity and the high honor of joining you here today and sharing my small business story with you folks and the American people. So it's a chain of eco-friendly dry cleaners throughout the Tri-County here in West Palm and seems not too long ago, just a few years, the customer and us, the small business owner, we were able to keep up with inflation. There were resources available to us for expansion or if you had a bad month, you know, if there was something you needed to make up for. It seemed like the support was there and now, just a few short years later, it seems like all of those resources have dried up, the support's no longer there. We had an expansion plan about six years ago that we had to pause because we have to wait for our customers now to catch up with the inflation, the supply chain issues still because we as a small business, we can't double our price points. Although the cost of doing business now is two, three or four times what it was just a few years ago. So we've had to get creative. Our industry, probably 30% in the dry cleaning industry, never survived COVID. And just recently, this summer, I was contacted, my wife and I, by another local dry cleaner here in West Palm. They were asking advice. So husband and wife have been there for about 35 years, their lease was up and the landlord was doubling their rent, which would have meant that that's what they've been paying themselves for probably a better part of 20 years. So they had to make a decision. Do they hand the keys back or do we get creative, work together, pool resources? And so what we did was we figured out the right price point for them, but we did their cleaning for them, at least until we figured it out. And so they were not able to pay their operations, they couldn't keep that going, but they were able to save their business by strategically partnering. And by the end of summer, I think I was contacted by about 12 other local dry cleaners saying, can you guys help us also because we're going through the same thing? Thank you. And it seems now, so the delta between the reality of what inflation is right now, and what we have in front of us, the reality of that and the small business owners capabilities that delta is too great. So unless we affect change immediately, I fear that in the next few years, if we don't see that change, we might see another 30% of our industry and others no longer exist. So I just want to say thank you again, Mr. President, for allowing me to share my go green dry cleaner story, and thank you.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.