Huge: Trump Hits 50% Approval Rate, Now AFL-CIO Won't Rule Out 2020 Endorsement
The president of one of the most traditionally liberal organizations in America — The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations — hasn’t ruled out an endorsement of President Donald Trump in 2020. And, as just as foreseeably as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, the left is losing their collective (and collectivist) marbles.
The statement was made by AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka on Wednesday, where he told a reporter from Newsmax at a media breakfast that his organization would look at the president in spite of his reservations about “growing wage inequality.”
“Well, he will be looked at,” Trumka said. “Everyone will be looked at.”
He was then asked how serious his organization was about supporting a Republican in a presidential race since Nixon over the very, very left-leaning George McGovern in 1972. He would only say that “we will consider every candidate who’s running in 2020.”
“Trump got 3 percent more of our members than Romney did in 2012, but Hillary Clinton, unfortunately for her, got 10 percent less of our members than Obama did in 2012,” Trumka said. “And some didn’t vote for president or some voted third party.”
The fact that union members are becoming more conservative and abandoning the Democrats is a hard thing for the labor movement to swallow. Which is why Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a dedicated DNC apparatchik, went after Trumka after he made the statement.
“THIS MUST BE A TYPO.. @RichardTrumka please clarify…. this can’t possibly be what you said,” Weingarten said in a tweet.
THIS MUST BE A TYPO.. @RichardTrumka please clarify…. this can’t possibly be what you said: Trumka Won't Rule Out Unions Endorsing Trump in 2020 https://t.co/vMcIE16RYq #Newsmax via @Newsmax_Media
— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇦🇺🇸💪🏿👩🎓🟣 (@rweingarten) August 2, 2018
According to Fox News, Weingarten also tweeted that “In my convos w union members & workers all over USA, it’s clear they oppose the damage Trump is doing. Yes we want him to help steel workers but his tax giveaways to the rich, attacks on ACA, his divisiveness, his attacks on democracy & his caging of children are disqualifying.”
First, it’s worth pointing out that the “caging of children” actually occurred under the Obama administration. We still want to go with that one, Randi?
Second, this is hardly a surprise. Unions have almost always embraced their suzerainty under the Democrats, and anyone who threatens this unanimity is to be thoroughly excoriated. Trumka quickly learned his lesson; a spokeswoman with the organization quickly stressed the “click-bait” nature of Newsmax’s headline and that you needed to look at the context of the remarks. If you want to look at the full context, it’s here:
CLIP: @AFLCIO President @RichardTrumka on President Trump, trade and possible 2020 endorsement.
Full @CSMonitor breakfast will air later today on C-SPAN networks. pic.twitter.com/mtF8fef02W
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 1, 2018
Trumka did note that he thought Trump’s promises toward working Americans “were either broken or unfulfilled.” Nearly in the same breath, he pointed out the very problem with that statement: “It doesn’t matter if the GDP is great and unemployment is at 3.9 percent.”
He also made a few other points that Democrats won’t like, including that Trump got union votes “because people were mad. They were looking for someone who was going to change the economy. They felt there were assaults on their health care and assaults on their pensions. People were looking for someone who will shake up the status quo, because the economy wasn’t working for them. Their wages were flattened and they found that candidate in Donald Trump.”
Trump, he also said, “promised to lift up workers and reign in Wall Street.”
In other words, they had perfect reason to be mad, particularly from members of the Washington political “swamp.” As for the “click-bait” nature of the headline (and one would assume the article and the way his remarks were reported, if the disavowal of them is any indication), consider the fact that a president of the AFL-CIO won’t endorse literally any Democrat against Donald Trump.
Anyone in the labor movement who wants to opine on this issue knows everything they need to know about Trump at this point to make a judgment regarding whether or not they would support the president or a generic Democrat — unless, of course, they’re wondering about whether the Democrats will nominate someone so far left (like the aforementioned George McGovern) that they would actually have to consider sticking with the party.
This isn’t a hypothetical question: Two out of the four top Democrats in a recent 2020 poll are to the hard left of the party, including someone so far left that they don’t even call themselves a member of the party.
There indeed lies the problem — there’s a very good chance that whoever gets nominated to oppose Trump (assuming he runs) is going to be so rebarbative to union membership that labor leaders are going to be forced to pick between their historic political allegiances and a membership that’s fed up with those that claim to lead them. If they choose to ignore their own rank and file, it’s at their own peril.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
