Donald Trump in his purest style. A demagogue, a slacker, a climate denier and a liar, the former President of the United States held a rally in Clinton Township, Michigan to counter-schedule the second debate between the Republican primary candidates for the 2024 presidential election. He has taken the opportunity to attack his likely rival in these elections, current President Joe Biden, for joining a United Auto Workers (UAW) union picket in the same state the day before, one of the decisive ones for the next one Year. Trump has also attacked policies supporting electric cars.
Trump has made some mistakes lately (like when he said Biden was on track to provoke World War II or a catastrophe over offshore wind farms), but he devoted much of his speech to trying to force Biden to ridicule him and portray him as mentally incompetent. “He spoke for a few seconds and I had no idea what he was saying. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what he said. ‘Where am I?’ “Oh, you’re in Michigan,” he parodied, even though the president had clearly intervened with a direct message.
Trump also attacked the electric car. Among auto workers’ concerns is that many of the new factories employ non-union workers whose wages are below current industry wages. They fear such a salary devaluation and that is why job security is one of their demands. Trump takes advantage of this and attacks electric cars: “They don’t go far enough and they are too expensive.”
Supporters of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Clinton Township, Michigan.Photo: Portal | Video: Portal
“Hundreds of thousands of American jobs, your jobs, will be lost forever because corrupt Joe Biden is selling you out, but I don’t think it’s him. I don’t think he really knows what the hell he’s doing (…) I don’t blame him. But he is surrounded by radical left-wing Marxists and crazy people, fascists, bad people. They sell you to China. They sell you to the environmental extremists of the radical left. People have no idea how damaging this will be to the environment too. “They know that a lot of bad things happen to them when they dispose of these batteries and that the excavation of earth to make these batteries can be very harmful to the environment,” he said in his speech.
The Biden administration has managed to attract strong investment in battery factories and electric cars with tax incentives that have raised concerns in Europe, but vehicles with Chinese components remain ineligible. Still, Trump’s thesis is that Joe Biden’s administration will destroy the United States’ automotive industry and hand it over to China. The future of the engine will be “Made in China” for Biden and “Made in the USA” for him, he said. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the exact opposite the day before: “Biden is fighting to ensure that the cars of the future are made in the United States by unionized American workers in well-paying jobs, rather than made in China .” .
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During Biden’s nearly three years in office, manufacturing employment has risen sharply, compared to the decline under Trump. Despite the corporate and high-income tax cuts passed during his presidency, Trump has presented himself as a “defender of the working class” in Michigan.
Trump knows that to win the election he must win votes from the working class, who supported him against Hillary Clinton in 2016. He then presented himself as a nationalist seeking the support of those dissatisfied with globalization and seduced them with his populist speech, which he is now repeating. He stole from Democrats the traditional support of a large portion of industrial workers in the so-called Rust Belt of the United States, where heavy industry is concentrated. He defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, among other blue-collar states, to win the presidency. In 2020, Biden recaptured the three states that, along with Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, could be decisive again next year.
The former president had planned to host the Republican candidates’ debate with a rally in Michigan two weeks ago. Biden later brought it up at the invitation of Shawn Fain, the head of the UAW union. When Trump’s plans became known, Fain released a hostile message against the former president: “Every fiber of our union is committed to fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.” “We can’t continue to elect billionaires and millionaires who don’t understand what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get ahead and expect them to solve the problems of the working class,” he said.
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