UAW president Shawn Fain didn't mince words when asked about Trump's ridiculous publicity stunt this Wednesday in Detroit, pretending he cares about union workers, or workers in general for that matter.
September 27, 2023

UAW president Shawn Fain didn't mince words when asked about Trump's ridiculous publicity stunt this Wednesday in Detroit, pretending he cares about union workers, or workers in general for that matter.

As I discussed here when expressing my disdain for the media for pretending that Trump cares one iota about the working class, and that this nonsense he has planned was going to somehow one-up Biden and suddenly everyone would forget his horrible record when he was in office, I didn't think Biden needed to show up on a picket line and give into the preening by Democrats and the media on this issue. His record compared to Trump's already spoke for itself.

Well, he did show up, which is fine, and it was met with a ton of positive response, and now we've got a sharp contrast between that and this fiasco Trump has planned for Detroit.

Trump apparently once again doesn't have the "best people" working for him, or he might have picked somewhere that was not a nonunion business to hold his rally.

Here's the exchange between the UAW's Shawn Fain and CNN's Wolf Blitzer this Tuesday. It was nice to see him shoot down the EV talking point as well that we keep hearing constantly from the right, and make it clear that the companies using that production to either push out the unions or lower working standards are the problem, and not the production of electric vehicles as a whole if these manufacturers were working in good faith with the unions:

BLITZER: As you know, former president Trump will travel to Michigan tomorrow to give a speech to auto workers in Detroit. Many of your members who are supporters of his. He wrote this on social media, just ahead of President Biden's visit there today. This is from Trump. "Joe Biden's a draconian and indefensible electric vehicle mandate will annihilate of U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of auto workers their jobs."

Is the former president right? Does the push for electric vehicles here in the United States hurt your union?

FAIN: It doesn't if it's a just transition, and that's what we're fighting for right now. It doesn't if companies do the right thing, and put this work under our agreements or to our standards. And again, it's the companies driving this race to the bottom, and they're using our tax dollars to finance it.

I find the pathetic irony that the former president is gonna hold a rally for union members at a non-union business. And you know, all you have to do is look at his track record. His track record speaks for itself. In 2008 during the Great Recession, he blamed UAW members. He blamed our contracts for everything that was wrong with these companies. That’s a complete lie.

In 2015 when he was running for president, he talked about doing a rotation, taking all these good-paying jobs in the Midwest and moving them somewhere in the South where people work for less money, and then to make people beg for their jobs back at lower wages.

And the ultimate show of his– how much he cares about our workers was in 2019 when he was the president of the United States. Where was he then? GM– our workers at GM were on strike for 60 days. For two months, they were out there on the picket lines. I didn’t see him hold a rally. I didn’t see him stand up at the picket line. And I sure as hell didn’t hear him comment about it. He’s missing in action.

BLITZER: So, here's the question, what about meeting with Trump? Would you meet with him when he's in Detroit tomorrow?

FAIN: I see no point in meeting with him because I don’t think the man has– has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for. He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.

BLITZER: Well, that effectively sounds like an endorsement for Biden. Am I wrong?

FAIN: It’s not an endorsement for anyone. It’s just flat-out how I view the former president.

That's going to leave a mark. Too bad most of our media hasn't covered Trump's publicity stunt rally as honestly as the UAW president just did in response to a bunch of ridiculous questions by Blitzer that he should have already known the answer to, if he actually cared about doing what's supposed to be his job.

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