Donald Trump to Counter-Program Second GOP Debate by Appearing with Striking Auto Workers in Detroit

Former President Donald Trump will appear with striking union members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Detroit, Michigan, as his opponents squabble for the spotlight on the debate stage on September 27, according to a report that multiple sources have confirmed to Breitbart News. 

The New York Times first reported on Trump’s forthcoming appearance with Detroit auto workers striking against the big three automakers — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — which will serve as counter-programming to the GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

The GOP frontrunner will deliver a “prime-time speech before current and former union members,” according to the Times, as they strike for higher wages following 40-year-high inflation and seek commitments from automakers and the federal government that Biden’s electrical vehicle agenda will not threaten their jobs or pay, as Breitbart News has documented. 

Multiple Trump aides have confirmed the 45th president’s plans to Breitbart News.

Trump, who regularly takes a majority of support in independent national GOP primary polls, is keeping with the strategy his campaign employed in the first debate when he skipped the event and instead joined Tucker Carlson for a one-on-one 45-minute interview on the host’s eponymously-named show, Tucker on Twitter. 

After battling the counter-programming, which was released at the start of the first GOP debate on August 23 and instantly went viral, debate storylines quickly fell to the wayside when Trump surrendered in Fulton County, Georgia, on his fourth indictment a day later. The arrest produced the now-iconic mugshot of Trump, the first-ever mugshot of a former president of the United States. 

Trump’s latest plans further signal his focus on a potential general election rematch with President Joe Biden rather than the Republican primary, as union workers who were long the foundation of the Democrat coalition were pivotal in helping elect him to office in 2016, as Breitbart News’s John Binder emphasized on Saturday: 

In 2016, union workers helped propel Trump and his nationalist-populist agenda to the White House — scoring the most support among union households for any Republican presidential candidate since former President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

In 2020, Biden helped widen that gap by taking 57 percent of union households compared to Trump’s 40 percent. Trump could significantly increase his share of union households in a rematch against Biden by registering to vote millions of non-college-educated whites in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania who remain disenfranchised.

Binder’s report highlighted that the Detroit Free Press first revealed that Trump was weighing a visit to Michigan to meet with UAW members striking against the Big Three automakers.

Initially, auto-workers were seeking a 40 percent wage increase over four years, but last week, the number was tapered down to about 36 percent over the same period, as Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney noted: 

Nationally, it seems reasonable to assume inflation will run around three percent on average over the next four years. In Detroit, we may be looking at four or five percent inflation. Compounded, a four percent per year rate of inflation would result in a 17.3 percent increase in prices. A five percent annual rate of inflation compounds to 22.1 percent over four years.

Once that’s added to a true-up for the excess cost-of-living increase over the past four years and the loss of the expected real wage increases, you can easily get to a reasonable economic justification for something in the neighborhood of a 30 percent wage increase.

Carney added, “If the ghost of Bidenflation is exorcised from our economy, the next round of negotiations between car manufacturers and their workers will likely be much easier.” 

Trump contended that Biden’s electric vehicle agenda is selling the UAW “down the drain” in a Truth Social post on Sunday night. 

“They’ll be made in China, under Crooked Joe’s CHINA FIRST POLICY. AUTOWORKERS, VOTE FOR TRUMP – I’LL MAKE YOU VICTORIOUS & RICH. IF YOUR “LEADERS” WON’T ENDORSE ME, VOTE  THEM OUT OF OFFICE, NOW,” he implored the UAW’s rank-and-file.

“WITH THE DEMOCRATS & CROOKED JOE CALLING THE SHOTS, YOU’LL BE JOBLESS & PENNILESS WITHIN 4 YEARS. REMEMBER, BIDEN IS A CROOK WHO HAS BEEN PAID MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BY CHINA, & OTHERS,” he added.

RELATED — UAW Member: I Won’t Vote for Biden Again, EV Subsidies Are Being Used Against Workers