Democrats sounded the alarm after Trump outfoxed Joe Biden on the auto union strike with his plan to deliver a speech in Detroit next week.
Trump decided to forgo the upcoming Republican primary debate scheduled for Wednesday, September 27 at the Reagan Library in California. Instead, he will be in Detroit, speaking to a crowd of more than 500 current and former union members.
For the first time in the history of the 150,000-member United Auto Workers Union, members went on strike against the “Big 3” manufacturers at midnight Thursday night after no deal was reached.
The “Big 3” include Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, the newly-formed merger of Fiat Chrysler and the PSA Group.
“Key demands from the union have included 40% hourly pay increases; a reduced, 32-hour, workweek; a shift back to traditional pensions; the elimination of compensation tiers; and a restoration of cost-of-living adjustments. Other items on the table include enhanced retiree benefits and better vacation and family leave benefits,” CNBC reported.
The automakers pushed back on union demands and said their proposals would bankrupt the companies.
Democrats are quietly panicking over Trump’s planned speech in Detroit as Joe Biden’s White House grapples with how to handle the historic strike.
“Trump scooped us. Now if we announce we’re going, it looks like we’re just going because of Trump,” said a national Democratic strategist, according to Politico. “We waited too long. That’s the challenge.”
According to Politico, a union advisor said Trump “boxed Biden in.”
“[Trump] actually has people who know what they’re doing. He boxed Biden in. It was kinda genius,” the union advisor said.
Politico reported:
Some Joe Biden allies fear that Donald Trump is outmaneuvering them on the auto workers’ strike with his decision to head to Detroit for a speech next week.
Democrats close to the White House said they saw Trump’s trip as a plainly cynical ploy to gain political advantage from the current United Auto Workers strike at three plants. But they also worry it is a sign that the ex-president had a more sophisticated campaign than in previous cycles — and that Biden’s operation needs to step it up.
“We should not underestimate Donald Trump. He’s a survivor and this is going to be a very hard-fought campaign,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a member of Biden’s national advisory board who was in Wayne, Mich., and Toledo, Ohio, on Monday with UAW members. “We need a message to working-class Americans. Right now, they’re still hurting in terms of gas prices, food prices, housing costs, utilities costs, and they don’t feel like their wages are going up fast enough, and they feel like the very wealthy are getting too much of the rewards. That’s what I heard on the picket lines.”
Earlier this month, Joe Biden, the most ‘pro-union president in US history,’ arrogantly brushed off a question about the looming auto strike.
“No, I’m not worried about [an auto workers] strike until it happens. I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Biden said to reporters on the tarmac in Philadelphia on Labor Day.
WATCH: BIDEN (September 5): “No, I’m not worried about [an auto workers] strike until it happens. I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
It happened.
pic.twitter.com/rsNNDzGzE0— Officer Lew (@officer_Lew) September 15, 2023
The autoworkers are not happy with Joe Biden.
Autoworkers lashed out at “pro-union” Joe Biden on the eve of a historic United Auto Workers union strike last week.
A dozen union members gathered in Kokomo, Indiana, the hometown of United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain on Thursday night.
One worker expressed his frustration with Joe Biden and his politcies as the clock got closer to midnight last Thursday.
“I don’t know what he’s done,” said Gary Quick, president of Local 685 at a union hall in Kokomo, Indiana on Thursday night, according to Politico. “Ask him. I don’t think he knows what he’s done. Seriously. I’m not trying to be mean.”
Another union member, Denny Butler, blasted Joe Biden and the Democrat party.
“They’re all full of shit,” Butler said, according to Politico. “We haven’t had a president in there for years, with the exception of Trump, that was really for the people, all the way back to the Reagan days.”
“Historically, man, if you didn’t vote Democrat years ago, and you were in the union, sometimes you got your ass kicked,” he said. “Democrats were for the working people. That shit has changed. I’m telling you what, the Democratic Party was not what it was 20, 30 years ago.”