The United Auto Workers union’s president derided GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump as being out of touch with the striking workers, claiming in a CNN interview Tuesday that the former president “serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”
On the same day that Joe Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line on behalf of the United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, who has not yet given an endorsement in the 2024 race, said that he has no desire to discuss the strike 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 told The Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer. “He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”
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After Blitzer commented that his remark “effectively sounds like an endorsement for Biden,” Fain pushed back.
“It’s not an endorsement for anyone. It’s just flat-out how I view the former president.”
Trump is expected to skip Wednesday's primary debate and instead speak at a non-union automotive parts manufacturer in Michigan—a move that Fain called a “pathetic irony.”
“All you have to do is look at his track record. His track record speaks for itself.”
Meanwhile, Biden, whose appearance outside a General Motors facility in Michigan was at the invitation of Fain, told onlookers that they “should be doing just as well” as the auto companies, The New York Times reported.
“You’ve heard me say many times: Wall Street didn’t build this country,” Biden said. “The middle class built this country. And unions built the middle class. That’s a fact. Let’s keep going. You deserve what you’ve earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you get paid now.”
The UAW gave its support to Biden 2020, but this time around has taken issue with the administration’s goal of having two out of three new passenger cars be electric by 2032. (Electric cars currently comprise 5.8 percent of cars on the road, and they’re getting more popular by the year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
Biden said Tuesday that he’s “not worried about” what it would take for the union to endorse him again. Fain, for his part, said on CNN that endorsements will come “at the appropriate time.”
