Fact Check: Buttigieg Falsely Claims Trump ‘Turns His Back’ on Middle Class

CLAIM: Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, claimed during ABC News’s 2020 Democrat debate that President Trump “turns his back” on middle-class communities.

VERDICT: False. Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” economy has led to record-low unemployment for the bottom-tier of working and middle-class Americans, as well as major wage hikes thanks to a tightened labor market.

“We’re going to force this president to stand up on that debate stage next to somebody who actually lives in a middle-class neighborhood,” Buttigieg said. “In the industrial Midwest, in the exact kind of community that he tends to speak for but turns his back on.”

In fact, the South Bend-Mishawaka metropolitan area has continued to see a drop in unemployment and job gains as part of Trump’s economic nationalist agenda.

Since Trump became president, the South Bend metro area has enjoyed an unemployment rate that has never exceeded 4.6 percent, and which has dropped as low as 3.2 percent — sometimes lower than the national unemployment rate.

Likewise, some of the forgotten working and middle-class populations — those who have suffered from wage stagnation for decades — have secured wage increases thanks to Trump’s policies. This week, the New York Times admitted that black Americans’ wages are “finally rising” after a “decade of stagnation.”

Working-class Americans, like those who make up the majority of South Bend residents, have secured the largest wage hikes in the nation compared to all other economic demographic groups — a direct result of Trump tightening the labor market.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.