In a speech at a non-union auto supplier just outside Detroit Wednesday night, former President Donald Trump, the current GOP front-runner, made a likely futile pitch for the union’s endorsement.
Trump, who skipped tonight’s Republican presidential debate in California, told the crowd, which included United Auto Workers rank and file members, that they should push UAW President Shawn Fain and the union to endorse him because he would stop the auto industry’s planned shift to electric vehicles, which he predicted would lead to the demise of the US auto industry and jobs.
“Do me a favor, just get your union guys, your union leaders to endorse me,” he said later in the speech.
“Your leadership should endorse me, and I will not say another bad thing about them,” he added later.
Fain has so far declined to endorse Biden. He met with Biden Tuesday when he became the first sitting president to visit a union picket line.
But Fain has made it clear he would not support Trump. He told CNN Tuesday that he wouldn’t even meet with Trump when on his Michigan visit.
“I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to a rally for union members at a non-union business,” Fain told CNN earlier in the week, ahead of Trump’s visit. “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’s the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with our country,” Fain said.