America’s union workers, especially in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are ready to deliver a victory for President Trump as they helped push him over the finish line in 2016.
In exclusive interviews with Breitbart News, a handful of union workers said the 2020 presidential race with Trump vs. Democrat Joe Biden is, in many ways, similar to four years ago when Trump was victorious against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Biden, the union workers say, is a globalist, a China apologist, and corrupt — the same adjectives they used to describe Clinton. Trump, they say, is their only fighter in Washington, DC.
“Four years ago, the union leadership was telling us to support Hillary, and I said, ‘Yeah right, she’s going to kill the coal industry,’” Robert, a member of United Steelworkers Local 1557 says.
“We’re reliant on coal. Of course, I supported Trump,” he says. “I never voted ever before in my life, but I voted for Trump because of his policies. He wasn’t a politician. I’m sick and tired of the politicians thinking they put their pants on in some spectacular way that we don’t know how to do.”
Robert, 63 years old, previously worked at General Motors (GM) and the Delphi Corporation in Michigan before he took a buyout when a Chinese firm came in to acquire the company. The Obama-Biden auto bailout, Robert says, was paid for with the pensions of salaried Delphi workers.
Today, Robert works at a coke plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he says union workers are lining up to, again, back Trump against a corrupt career politician.
“Biden’s a crook,” he says. “He’s a lifetime politician who has nothing on his resume. And look at what he did for his kid. My dad never got me a six-figure job for doing nothing.”
In Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Kenneth — a retired union worker who was previously with the Teamsters Union — says the policies of the Clintons and Bidens of Washington, DC, have killed industries that he once worked in.
On Tuesday, he is voting for Trump, again.
“I support the person who has and will keep and return work here in the United States,” Kenneth says. “The Democrats lost sight of the working persons’ needs a long time ago. Not one [Democrat] since JFK has any credibility with blue-collar workers.
“Trump promised to help the common man and has delivered on just about every one of the promises,” he continues.
JB, a 37-year-old union worker at a fracking plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says the majority of his coworkers are backing Trump, many for the sole reason that Biden has repeatedly vowed to ban fracking and end the oil and natural gas industry.
“As far as the guys I’m working with, they’re overwhelmingly supporting Trump,” he says.
A 45-year-old union worker with the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, is in construction. He asks to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from his union leadership, which he says is attempting to persuade members to vote Biden, but they are resisting and going “hardcore for Trump.”
“I think if I came out, I think I would possibly be blackballed,” he says of needing to remain lowkey about his support for Trump.
“No Republican president has been elected without 50 percent of the union vote. Maybe people don’t want to admit it … a sort of silent majority,” he continues. “They’re using this stuff to pound in our heads that we need to be Democrats.”
He says he was in high school when Biden supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, the free trade deal that helped cost the U.S. about five million manufacturing jobs and 55,000 manufacturing plants. In 2016, he says his union endorsed Clinton, a decision he was dumbfounded by.
“It was unbelievable that they wanted us to sell our country out for who they endorsed. … Trump understands that the middle class pays the bills,” he says. “… people see through all the bullshit, and they’re not voting for Biden,” he says.
Another union worker, 48 years old, who must remain lowkey, says Trump is “the first president I voted for, rather than just voting against the other guy.”
Eric, a 51-year-old member of United Steelworkers Local 14200 in Marietta, Ohio, says he and his coworkers at their plastic plant are so supportive of Trump that they wear Trump 2020 stickers on their helmets at work.
“If Joe Biden showed up here, everyone I work with would show up with a Trump sign,” Eric says.
“If the Democrats think they’ve got a lock on the unions, they’re fucking crazy,” he says. “My kids are union, and they’re both Republicans. I was born and raised in a union household, but I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. They left me and my values.”
He says China entering the World Trade Organization, which Biden supported, gutted the Ohio Valley.
Like some of the other union workers interviewed, Eric was not the biggest Trump fan in 2016 despite ultimately voting for him. He says he “actually hated Trump’s guts but hated Hillary more.” JB says he did not vote for Trump in 2016. Today, he affectionately calls him “The Don” and early voted for him in Chicago, Illinois.
They all, though, say they know lots of union workers who are backing Trump against the wishes of their union bosses. Robert says an internal poll of many of his local union members showed overwhelming support for Trump.
“There are other union people I know who are voting for Trump,” Eric says. “Why the Democrats think they have a lock on us, I have no idea. The Democrat Party left us behind 30 years ago.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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