A couple of weeks ago, the disgraced and indicted Donald Trump sat down for an interview on “Meet the Press,” which was recorded on the eve of the United Auto Workers strike against the big three Detroit automakers. When asked about the possibility of a labor strike, Trump gave a particularly mealy-mouthed and cowardly unsupportive statement about the UAW, saying, “I’ll tell you what, the autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.”
After Trump’s disastrous “Meet the Press” interview, he has attempted to do what he always does: lie to everyone in the service of self-aggrandizement. UAW President Shawn Fain hasn’t been impressed, saying he has no interest in a photo op for Trump at the expense of workers. “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 probably remembers this interview from 2008 when Trump went on Neil Cavuto’s Fox Business show to tell America that it was unions ruining the economy.
Posted to X, the website formerly known as Twitter, by Cap Action members Will Ragland and Colin Seeberger is a nice short video of Trump in 2008 telling Cavuto how he has to keep paying more and more money to workers: “All of a sudden, 20 years is up and now you’re saying, ‘That’s a lot of money.’” He and Cavuto kibitz about how workers start feeling entitled to big year-end bonuses, and Trump remarks, “It’s the same thing with the unions. They get their little 5%, they get another 2%, they get another 3%, 4%. Then, all of a sudden, they’re making more money than the people that own the company.”
The number of times that a salaried worker at a company made “more money than the people that own the company” was exactly none, in the year of nineteen-hundred-and-it-never-happened.
RELATED STORY: Trump offers up cowardly refusal to support striking autoworkers
When UAW went on strike for three days in 2008, they only relented, giving up important concessions, under the pretense that automakers were going belly-up because of the Great Recession. Autoworkers were told they would be made whole again once companies like General Motors were out of the economic woods. And even though CEOs for big automakers boast of record-breaking profits and rake in record-breaking salaries, that hasn’t happened, and American labor won’t take this sitting down.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is set to speak with … nonunion automotive parts manufacturer Drake Enterprises on Wednesday. Donald Trump: king scab.
Add your name: Solidarity with United Auto Workers! #StandUpUAW
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