On Sunday night, former President Donald Trump called on United Auto Workers members to kick their president to the curb after the union endorsed President Joe Biden last week.
“He is a real ‘STIFF’ who is selling the Automobile Industry right into the big, powerful, hands of China,” Trump wrote on Truth Social his social media network, adding the autoworkers should “get rid of this dope” and vote for him instead.
Trump was responding to UAW President Shawn Fain’s appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. Fain ripped into Trump’s record on unions and preserving working class jobs.
“I can't fathom any union would support Donald Trump for president,” Fain said.
When UAW officially endorsed Biden last week, Fain called Trump a “scab” who “stands against everything we stand for as a union, as a society.” Biden, who became the first president to join a picket line in September when he stood with striking autoworkers in Michigan, “bet on the American worker while Donald Trump blamed the American worker,” Fain said at a Washington meeting of union leaders on Jan. 24.
The UAW, which represents nearly one million current and former autoworkers in the U.S. and Canada, did not immediately return a request for comment.
“Apparently losing the UAW endorsement to Joe Biden has left Donald Trump’s wounded ego with quite the SCAB,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement responding to Trump’s social media post.
The day after Biden joined the UAW picket line, Trump also traveled to Michigan to give a speech at a non-unionized auto parts supplier and urged UAW to endorse him instead of his Democratic rival.
“It doesn't matter what the hell you're getting an hour. Do me a favor, just get your union guys, your leaders to endorse me. And I'll take care of the rest,” Trump said, later adding “your current negotiations don't mean as much as you think."
"I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets but I don't think you are picketing for the right thing," Trump said.
By Election Day, members and UAW retirees usually vote 60% Democratic, a former union official told the Associated Press last week.
Fain lead his union members on a weekslong strike against Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers — Ford, GM and Stellantis — last fall after securing the UAW presidency in May on a platform of greater militancy in negotiations and a more democratic union structure. It was the first time UAW members directly elected their leader and Fain won by just 477 votes out of almost 140,000 ballots cast.
But the longest autoworker strikes in U.S. history were successful, garnering national attention and widespread support, including from Biden. Workers overwhelmingly voted for deals that would raise pay by 33% between 2023 and 2028, scrap wage tiers the union viewed as unfair and allow UAW to unionize workers at new electric-vehicle battery plants.
On Sunday, Trump argued expanding electric car production, a key priority of the Biden administration, will doom the U.S. auto industry and send more jobs to China. He claimed his second administration would require every car to be built in the U.S. and place heavy tariffs on foreign-owned plants in the U.S.
Biden has declared himself “the most pro-union president in American history” and has collected the endorsements of many of the nation’s largest unions, representing millions of workers. But Trump has also attempted to court union voters to some success in his previous elections.
Trump is expected to meet with Teamsters leadership in Washington on Wednesday, a summit that has reportedly divided the union that represents over one million workers. Biden was invited to meet with the union on the same day. Teamsters president Sean O’Brien met with Trump at his Florida estate earlier this month
“Our members want to hear from all candidates of all parties about what they plan to do for working people as President,” O’Brien said in a statement last week. “Our union wants every candidate to know that there are 1.3 million Teamsters nationwide whose votes will not be taken for granted. Workers’ voices must be heard.”