When Donald Trump gave a speech in Michigan on Wednesday, seeking to capitalise on the United Auto Workers strike, at least two crowd members holding signs saying “union members for Trump” and “auto workers for Trump” turned out to be neither.
The Detroit News reported: “One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said ‘union members for Trump’ acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a reporter after the event.
“Another person with a sign that read ‘auto workers for Trump’ said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn’t provide their names.”
The paper said between 400 and 500 people attended the event, at a non-unionised automotive parts supplier in Clinton Township.
Trump skipped a Republican debate in California to visit Macomb county. Politico pointed out why, saying Macomb “occupies a unique role on the political map.
“Of the more than 3,000 counties in the US, it’s hard to find one that’s a better barometer of the atmospheric conditions affecting the 2024 election [than] Macomb county, with its high percentage of UAW workers.
“… The blue-collar suburb is often referred to as a bellwether, though … it’s more like an indicator species in biology, offering important clues on the environmental health of an ecosystem.”
One attendee at Trump’s speech who was an auto worker, Doug King, 55, told the Detroit News: “The four years under Trump were the best years that we had in the auto industry.”
Trump told workers negotiations between the UAW and Ford, General Motors and Stellantis “don’t mean as much as you think”.
Railing against the shift to electric vehicles, he added: “You can be loyal to American labour or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics. But you can’t really be loyal to both. It’s one or the other.”
A spokesperson for Joe Biden, Kevin Munoz, called Trump’s speech “incoherent”, “pathetic” and “recycled”.
Trump went to Michigan a day after Biden. On Tuesday, in a historic moment in neighbouring Wayne county, Biden joined a UAW picket line and expressed support for striking workers.
The president did so at the invitation of the union president, Shawn Fain. Fain did not meet Trump, telling CNN the former president, the Republican presidential frontrunner, “serves the billionaire class”.
“I see no point in meeting with him because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” Fain said. “He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”
