Trump’s Fake News, Speaking At Non-Union Auto Parts Shop, False Chyron Makes It Look Like UAW

I hope the fact checking machines at all the networks and newspapers don’t conk out from overload. Tonight Donald Trump is telling a real whopper. It’s not only Four Pinocchios, it’s a a rainforest of Pinocchios. Trump is not on the GOP debate stage tonight, he’s at an auto parts store in Detroit, where he was invited by the owner and he’s got right-wing media making it look like something else altogether.

UAW’s President just said he will NOT meet with Trump:“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 the billionaire class & that's what's wrong with this country." This is the truth.

— QuoteDigger (@QuoteDigging) September 28, 2023

Here’s the real story:

This evening, rather than attend the second Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump will speak at Drake Enterprises, Inc., in Macomb County, Michigan. The plant is a nonunion truck-parts manufacturer that has nothing to do with the Big Three, where United Auto Workers (UAW) members are waging a historic strike, the first time they have ever taken on all of the three major automakers at once.

Trump is visiting at the invitation of Drake Enterprises’ president, Nathan Stemple, who told Fox & Friends yesterday that “some of our colleagues that we do business with reached out to us,” informing him that Trump wanted to hold a rally and was looking for someone to host.

“We were more than willing to do so,” he said.

When asked how the UAW strike is impacting his company, Stemple said that demand has dropped off for some of the parts his plant produces. The show’s host then asked him how the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) — a Biden administration priority to which the GOP, Trump included, is loudly and firmly opposed — would affect his company.

“Oh, it would put us out of business,” Stemple responded. “If electric vehicles took over today across the board, we’d be completely out of business.”

Well, there you have it, all in a brief television clip: Trump’s visit to Michigan is being coordinated by Michigan’s nonunion auto manufacturers, many of whom oppose the transition to EVs. (Parts suppliers are particularly opposed, as an EV power train requires fewer parts than an internal combustion engine.) Holding such a rally during a strike is the opposite of showing solidarity with union workers. The Republican Party’s faux-populist wing has been trying to convince the public that UAW members oppose it too, and that this is part of their reason for striking. It is not. Rather, it is a segment of auto manufacturers (i.e., the bosses) who object to EVs. The UAW doesn’t oppose the transition; it merely wants it to be just, with jobs in EV plants unionized.

And that makes perfect sense. Technologies always change. The light bulb replaced candles, the buggy whip went out when cars first came on the scene, now electric cars will dominate. This is how science works. Things move forward.

Chris Marchione, political director of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 1M in Michigan, says that several members of his family, current UAW members in Michigan, received text messages from that right-to-work activist, also a UAW member, who invited them to attend Trump’s rally. 

“People are trying to push that this is organic, but it’s not,” said Marchione.

My cousins are all UAW members. Every one of them got a text message asking if they wanted to go. The organizers are picking who they want. They wanted prospective attendees to pass along their social media profiles. Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off. If he wants to support union workers, pay the fucking glaziers who got screwed when they put the windows on Trump Tower. 

Yes, indeed. You’re so pro-labor? Pay your workers, how’s about that for a start. No, what’s happening here is Trump needs desperately to appear like labor supports him and it does not. Not by a hell of a long shot.

When asked on CNN yesterday about Trump’s visit, UAW president Shawn Fain said, “I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a nonunion business.” He continued:

All you have to do is look at his track record. His track record speaks for itself: in 2008, during the Great Recession, he blamed UAW members. He blamed our contracts for everything that is wrong with these companies. That’s a complete lie.

In 2015, when he was running for president, he talked about doing a rotation: taking all these good-paying jobs in the Midwest and moving them somewhere in the South where people work for less money, and then making people beg for their jobs back at lower wages.

And the ultimate show of how much he cares about workers was in 2019, when he was the president of the United States. Where was he then? Our workers at GM were on strike for two months. I didn’t see him hold a rally, I didn’t see him stand on the picket line, and I sure as hell didn’t hear him comment on it. He was missing in action.

And nothing has changed. The reality TV actor is creating a reality TV moment in Michigan tonight for the benefit of the cult. And RSBN, a Trump propaganda channel, is helping him. No surprise there either.