Plus-- Trump's Thumbs Down On His GOP Opponents
The right-leaning Real Clear Politics national polling average shows Trump with 56.6% of the vote. That’s more than DeSantis (14.4%), Haley (5.8%), Ramaswampy (5.1%), Pence (4.2%), Scott (2.8%), Christie (2.7%), Burgum (0.9%) and Hutchinson (0.6%) combined. If you watched last night’s debate, you saw vividly that Trump has no serious competition and how the worst occupant of the White House can waltz right into another nomination. Last night Trump referred to them as “job candidates” who are competing to be “secretary of something.” He also announced that none of them will be his running mate. As Dan Pfeiffer wrote this morning, “[L]ast night’s debate proved that none of them are ACTUALLY running for President in 2024. Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are vying to be Trump’s vice presidential pick. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy are campaigning for the 2028 GOP nomination. Chris Christie is auditioning for a gig on MSNBC. Mike Pence may have a death wish by courting the voters who want to murder him. And no one knows what the hell Doug Burghum is doing.”
Trump made the announcement that none of them looks like a VP during his standup comedy routine near Detroit where he spoke to 400 mostly non-autoworkers at Drake Enterprises, an anti-union parts supplier in Clinton Township that doesn’t hire UAW members. Shawn Fain, the UAW president had already ruled out meeting with Trump: “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. He serves a billionaire class, and that’s what’s wrong with this country… I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a nonunion business.”
It wasn’t a rally for union members. Most of the attendees were MAGA ringers given printed signs by the Trump campaign. The UAW’s chief negotiator (and VP for General Motors), Mike Booth was equally excited byTrump’s visit: “Let me be blunt. Donald Trump is coming off as a pompous ass. Coming to Michigan to speak at a nonunion employer and pretending it has anything to do with our fight at the Big Three is just more verbal diarrhea from the former president.”
The Detroit News’ Craig Mauger was inside the Drake facility and reported Trump “railed against electric vehicles… saying they're too expensive, aren't capable of traveling far enough and would spur job losses for Americans… Amid a historic strike by the United Auto Workers against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, Trump said: ‘Your current negotiations don’t mean as much as you think.’ Trump argued that regardless of the outcome of the strike, the bigger threat to employees was the shift to electric cars and trucks, which he described as a ‘hit job’ on Michigan and Detroit. ‘You can be loyal to American labor or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics,’ Trump said at one point. ‘But you can’t really be loyal to both. It’s one or the other.’… Kevin Munoz, spokesman for Biden's reelection campaign, described the speech as ‘incoherent’ and ‘a pathetic, recycled attempt to feign support for working Americans. Americans have seen him try this before, and they aren’t buying it,’ Munoz said. ‘They know who Donald Trump really is: a billionaire charlatan running on empty words, broken promises and lost jobs.’
He told workers to reach out to Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, and tell him if the union backs Trump, Fain could take a vacation and they would better off than they ever were. Trump later characterized the transition from gas engines to electric vehicles as "a transition to hell," a phrase he has repeated on the campaign trail this year.
"The auto industry is being assassinated," Trump said. "If you want to buy an electric car, that's absolutely fine. I'm all for it. But we should not be forcing consumers to buy electric vehicles they don't want to buy."
…About 400 to 500 Trump supporters were inside a Drake Enterprises facility for the speech. Drake Enterprises employs about 150 people, and the UAW doesn't represent its workforce. It wasn't clear how many auto workers were in the crowd for the speech, which was targeted at them.
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 Detroit News 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.
…So far, the number of jobs in vehicle and parts manufacturing in Michigan has held essentially steady during Biden's term in the White House, increasing by 2% to about 169,000 jobs in August, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
During Trump's four-year term, the number of jobs in vehicle and parts manufacturing in Michigan fell by 5% to about 166,000, according to the bureau's tracking. But the industry was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2021 when Trump left office.
The UAW released this three-and-a-half minute video yesterday, just before Trump’s visit, including Señor Trumpanzee himself, typically, lying to Michigan auto workers: