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United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain had his very own Hulk Hogan moment as he revealed a red T-shirt reading “Trump is a scab” to a roaring crowd at the Democratic National Convention.
Speaking on the opening night of the convention, Fain blasted Donald Trump for his failure to support American workers and threw his support behind Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
“For us in the labor movement, it’s real simple,” said Fain, whose union represents roughly 370,000 workers. “Kamala Harris is one of us, she’s a fighter for the working class, and Donald Trump is a scab.”
Trump and his running mate JD Vance are “lap dogs for the billionaire class, who only serve themselves,” he added.
“In the words of the great American poet Nelly: ‘It’s getting hot in here,’” he said, as he removed his jacket to unveil his shirt beneath. “It’s hot in here because you’re fired up and fed up. The American working class is in a fight for our lives.”
His shirt reveal echoed a cartoonish moment on the stage of the Republican National Convention, where former wrestling star Hogan ripped off his shirt to reveal a “Trump-Vance” tank top.
“Trump did nothing,” said Fain, pointing to the former president’s failed promise to revive a shuttered manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that left thousands of workers unemployed.
Fain’s union is among several influential labor groups endorsing Harris’s campaign. The first night of the DNC in Chicago heard from more than half a dozen union leaders representing millions of American workers.
“We are going to build a younger, darker, hipper, fresher, sneaker-wearing labor movement,” said Service Employees International Union president April Verrett, whose union represents nearly two million workers.
“A movement that is going to be more inclusive and built for the middle class, and we are going to end poverty-wage work once and for all,” she said.
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez meanwhile slammed the former president as a “two-bit union buster” during her DNC speech on Monday night.
Harris has touted her support for labor rights and raising the federal minimum wage to at least $15. Her running mate Tim Walz was active in the National Education Association union when he was a teacher in Minnesota, meaning that, if elected, he would be the first union member on the winning ticket.
Harris and Walz recently met with Fain in Detroit, and the union launched a massive ground and digital operation to support the ticket. This came after President Joe Biden last year became the first sitting president to join a picket line as he joined UAW members striking against Detroit’s Big Three automakers during an historic period for worker organizing and other American labor actions.
In his remarks to the RNC last month, Trump called out Fain by name, demanding that he be fired “immediately.”
Last week, UAW filed a federal labor complaint against Trump, who is accused of unlawfully intimidating workers by suggesting to Elon Musk that he supported firing striking workers.
