Rather than participate in the second Republican debate next week, former president Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he plans to visit Detroit to court union workers — a key segment of President Joe Biden’s base.
While other Republican presidential contenders gather in Simi Valley, Calif., where the debate will be held, Trump will head to the Motor City to hold a rally with striking union autoworkers.
According to Politico, some Biden allies fear Trump is “outmaneuvering them” on the strike with his announced travel.
Biden, who has called himself the “most pro-union president in history,” won the United Auto Workers’ endorsement in 2020, but the union, which typically endorses Democrats, has not endorsed the president yet. UAW president Shawn Fain said the union needs to see more from Biden before making any endorsement decisions.
It’s worth noting that this hardly means a Trump endorsement is likely. Fain has said another Trump term would be a “disaster,” and he was less than pleased at the former president’s announcement that he would visit Detroit and give a speech. “Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers,” Fain said.
Still, even if Trump fails to win an endorsement from union leaders, the visit could help the former president build support with union members, a voting bloc that greatly contributed to Biden’s 2020 win in Michigan.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Michigan in 2016, but he lost the state to Biden by a 2.78 percent margin in 2020. Biden was boosted in the state by his support among union households, which are 21 percent of the electorate. They supported Biden 56 percent to Trump’s 42 percent, according to exit polling by the Associated Press.
Biden’s strength with union members also helped him in other swing states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that Trump won in 2016.
The trip to Detroit is another example of Trump’s seemingly moving beyond the Republican primary and eyeing the general election. (See also: his recent comments on abortion and transgenderism.)
Biden, for his part, has voiced support for the UAW since it went on strike.
“Auto companies have seen record profits, including in the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of the UAW workers,” Biden said. “Those record profits have not been been shared fairly in my view with those workers.”
However, Biden’s decision to send acting labor secretary Julie Su and senior White House adviser Gene Sperling to Detroit “to offer their full support for the parties in reaching a contract” has upset union leaders who believe the pair’s appearance could be seen as a sign that the administration was seeking to control the negotiations.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that union autoworkers “are being sold down the ‘drain’ with all this Electric Car SCAM. They’ll be made in China, under Crooked Joe’s CHINA FIRST POLICY.”
“AUTOWORKERS, VOTE FOR TRUMP – I’LL MAKE YOU VICTORIOUS & RICH,” he added. “IF YOUR ‘LEADERS’ WON’T ENDORSE ME, VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE, NOW. WITH THE DEMOCRATS & CROOKED JOE CALLING THE SHOTS, YOU’LL BE JOBLESS & PENNILESS WITHIN 4 YEARS. REMEMBER, BIDEN IS A CROOK WHO HAS BEEN PAID MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BY CHINA, & OTHERS. He is a Manchurian Candidate!!!”
Other candidates also used the strike as an opportunity to criticize Biden.
Iowa’s KCCI Des Moines asked Florida governor Ron DeSantis how he would handle the tensions around U.S. labor if he were president.
“Well first of all I think with respect to the auto industry and the autoworkers, one of the things that’s a big threat to that is Biden’s push to pose electric vehicle mandates,” he said. “The reality is that’s not where the market is.”
“We want to preserve the ability of automakers to actually produce the type of vehicles that people want to buy,” DeSantis said. “That will mean more autoworker jobs because the industry will do better, the companies will do better. So, it’s an example of government trying to force something on the private sector that’s not going to be good for the companies and it is going to end up with fewer jobs in the industry. So, we will come and we will save the day on that.”
NR’s editors, meanwhile, have called the strike a “debacle”:
This corrupt, left-wing organization is willing to inflict significant economic damage on the rest of the country if its members don’t get 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work, a 46 percent pay raise, and defined-benefit pensions. On top of those demands, the UAW is also at an impasse with automakers because of the federal government’s centrally planned “transition” to electric vehicles.
Among the Republican presidential candidates, Senator Tim Scott has been the most critical of the striking autoworkers. He said Friday during an event in his home state of South Carolina, “We’re watching today, on every screen around the country, we’re seeing the UAW fight for more benefits and less hours working. More pay and fewer days on the job. It’s a disconnect from work.”
An Iowa voter asked Scott on Monday whether, if elected president, he would insert himself into labor talks. “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike,” Scott said. “He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely.”
Asked why Scott referenced federal workers in discussing the autoworker strike, campaign spokesperson Matt Gorman told NBC that Scott “has repeatedly made clear, both at that event and others, that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize any deal with the UAW and auto companies.”
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley also appeared skeptical of the strikers’ demands, saying during an appearance on Fox: “When you have a president that’s constantly saying go union, go union, this is what you get. The unions get emboldened, and then they start asking for things that companies have a tough time doing.”
“The union is asking for a 40 percent raise, the companies have come back with a 20 percent raise — I think any of the taxpayers would love to have a 20 percent raise and think that’s great,” Haley said. “But the problem is we’re all going to suffer from this. This is going to cause things to go up, and this is going to last awhile. . . . I don’t think government should get involved in this. These are private-sector matters. But I do think the tone of how a president talks about unions and how a president emboldens them does play a role in this, and we’re seeing what Biden has done.”
She said she was a “union buster” during her time as South Carolina governor. “We very much watched out for workers. . . . We didn’t encourage middlemen between companies and their workers. We encouraged workers to have that direct communication with them.”
Former vice president Mike Pence, when asked during an appearance on CNN about the “general fairness” of higher CEO pay compared to their workers’ salaries, said he sides with American workers.
“That ought to be left to the shareholders of that company,” Pence said. “I’m somebody that believes in free enterprise. I think those are decisions that can be made by shareholders and creating pressure. And I will fully support how these publicly traded companies operate. I’m not interested in government mandates or government bullying when it comes to those kind of issues.”
“I side with American workers,” he added when asked if he sides with CEOs or the union. “I side with all American families. I side with the people of this country . . . that are living under the failed policies of the Biden administration. Families are struggling. Families are hurting. They know we need new leadership in the White House.”
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said that while he “empathize[s] with workers who have seen wages not go up nearly at the same rate as prices have gone up,” workers should be protesting against the Biden administration, which has “given us the economic policies of inflation without wage growth to go along with it.”
“So, I understand the frustration, but I think union bosses may be directing that ire in the wrong direction when it belongs at the feet of our current government,” he said.
Ahead of the September 27 debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Ramaswamy and Haley are each expected to deliver major policy addresses on the campaign trail.
Ramaswamy, in a speech on Thursday in his home state of Ohio, will “offer unprecedented detail on how the United States will declare independence from Communist China.”
“He will lay out how through near-shoring to the U.S. and diversifying Chinese supply chains to our allies instead (South Korea, Japan, India, others), we can fortify U.S. security while also improving economic prosperity for all Americans,” a press release from the campaign says.
On Friday, Haley will deliver a speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics to roll out her economic plan to “save Americans from Bidenomics.”
Around NR
• “The theory that Donald Trump is disqualified from being president again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is not going away,” Dan McLaughlin writes. For this reason, he argues that the Supreme Court will need to settle the issue of Trump’s qualification and that it should do so “as soon as possible.”
One way or another, the risk that somebody in the process might disqualify Trump is a ticking time bomb. It could destroy the legitimacy of the next national election, and given the acrimony over the previous two elections, that might cast us into the worst crisis of legitimacy since 1860. But no matter who tries to disqualify Trump, in what setting or on what authority, because the question is one of federal law, there is little doubt that Trump would have standing to challenge this in federal court — all the way to the Supreme Court.
• John McCormack brings us a profile of Vivek Ramaswamy, a candidate with “ambition to spare,” from the campaign trail:
Whatever one thinks of Ramaswamy’s rhetoric, there is no denying that it is calibrated well for a deeply ambitious Republican politician who has calculated that Trump will dominate the GOP in 2024 no matter what. The question is what, if anything, Ramaswamy’s reward will be from Trump next year or from Trump’s supporters in 2028.
• I spoke with Terrisa Bukinovac, a progressive pro-lifer and the founder of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, who recently announced a 2024 presidential bid as a Democrat.
While she’ll be traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire and potentially South Carolina, the primary purpose of her campaign is raising money to run “explicit” ads showing the cruel reality of abortion in any states where she can get on the ballot. FCC-regulated broadcasters have limited ability to censor the ads of presidential candidates.
• Madeleine Kearns recaps where the 2024 Republican candidates stand on the issue of transgenderism. “From a social conservative’s perspective, the GOP candidates fall in three overlapping categories: Those with a proven policy record of resisting transgender ideology, those who talk a good game, and those who are rhetorically and politically unreliable,” she reports.
• Philip Klein takes Trump to task for his “disgusting” post about liberal Jews who “voted to destroy America.”
Defenders of Trump will no doubt try to argue that he wasn’t addressing all Jews but just “liberal” ones and also that he was merely posting a flyer that bore the name of “Jexit” — a name adopted by a group of pro-Trump Jews. But the flyer in question also had a “Trump2020” hashtag, suggesting that it was an old flyer and that Trump felt the need to share it this year on Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year for Jews.
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