Republicans Suddenly Desperate to Seem Pro-Union
GOP politicians are trying to use the UAW strike to suggest they're pro-worker. But, as always, actions speak way louder than words.
Politics

Thousands of striking auto workers are currently in their second week of picketing, but a few allegedly populist Republicans are hoping to seize on the strike for their own purposes—namely, they want union workers to vote for them and their party despite the GOP doing nothing for unions, and at times, actively harming them. And it’s the assholes you’d expect who are trying to play this game, like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), and former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden walked the picket line with United Auto Workers in Wayne, Michigan, on Tuesday as he looks to live up to the moniker of the “most pro-union president” in American history. Meanwhile, Trump is set to give a speech Wednesday night to mostly retired union workers at a non-union manufacturing plant in Detroit on Wednesday (instead of participating in the second Republican debate), and will not join a picket. He’s also running radio ads claiming that he “always had their back”—despite his Supreme Court appointees attacking unions, his National Labor Relations Board reversing several crucial Obama-era rulings, and the fact that he did nothing to try and raise the federal minimum wage.
But ignore all of those actual facts! Trump said in a recent NBC News interview that UAW bosses are to blame. “The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump,” he said. Ah, yes, brutally criticizing the leader will get him to endorse you.
The UAW hasn’t yet endorsed Biden due in part to concerns the union has about the administration doling out billions to companies like Ford for electric vehicle battery plants with no requirements to use union labor. But Biden is at least trying to do good things in the face of a divided Congress—and the presence of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—and his NLRB is moving to expand workers’ rights.