BREAKING: Press sec says Biden’s ‘words were twisted’ when he said he wanted to shut down coal plants

"We just wanted to be very clear on that," Jean-Pierre said in reference to the president's remarks, adding, "it was a bit loud and hard to hear." She said she didn't "want to get into punditry from here" but that the White House believes that the president said "words we believe were twisted."

On Friday, Biden promised to permanently end coal production in the United States while speaking in Carlsbad, California at a political event "touting his administration's economic policies."

"No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it," Biden said. "Even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of the existence of the plant."

Biden claimed that the US is going to "become a wind generation" and "it’s going to save them a hell of a lot of money and using the same transmission line that they transmitted the coal-fired electric on, we're going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar power."

In response Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, said on Saturday that President Biden's comments were "outrageous" and that the president owed coal miners an "immediate and public apology."

The senator from West Virginia said, "Let me be clear, this is something the President has never said to me. Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting."

After Manchin's response, Jean-Pierre put out a statement that read, "The President’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense."

"The President was commenting on a fact of economics and technology: as it has been from its earliest days as an energy superpower, America is once again in the midst of an energy transition," the statement read, indicating that the US must embrace "clean and efficient American energy."