Thom's blog
Wage Hating Burger Czar As Labor Secretary?
In just a two hour span, Donald Trump has completely exposed his whole "I love the workers" routine as just another classic Trump scam. It all began, where else, on Twitter, where on Wednesday night, Trump went after Chuck Jones, the local union president for the factory at the center of his Carrier deal.
These attacks weren't completely out of the blue -- Jones had called Trump a liar in an interview with the Washington Post -- but they were still in complete contrast to the man-of-the-people image Trump projected on the campaign trail.
Not only did Trump accuse Jones of "doing a terrible job of representing workers," he also blamed Jones and his union for Carrier moving their production to Mexico, saying that "if United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana".
Trump then ended his little rant by telling Jones "work more, talk less" and "to reduce dues" -- a classic right-wing attack on labor.
Amazing, right?
Get Trump a little mad and he sounds like any other Republican talking head on Fox so-called News.
This is the real Trump we're seeing now -- the Trump who allegedly stiffed his workers, the Trump who's been repeatedly accused of housing discrimination, and the Trump who's perfectly fine with importing immigrants as long as it benefits him personally.
For that Trump -- the real Trump -- workers like Chuck Jones have always just been props.
They were what he's used to cover up what is, with the exception of what he says are his positions on trade, a pretty standard right-wing set of policies.
Case in point: Trump's pick for Labor Secretary, fast food oligarch Andrew Puzder.
As the head of the company that owns Carl's Jr and Hardee's, Andrew Puzder has distinguished himself as no fan of the workers in his own fast-food industry.
He doesn't believe in a living wage, opposes paid leave, and has made it his personal mission to kill President Obama's executive order expanding overtime pay.
You really couldn't ask for a worse person to look out for American workers - besides maybe, I don't know, Gordon Gekko himself.
We heard a lot from Trump on the campaign trail about how the system was rigged.
But with his attacks on individual workers on Twitter and his choice of the most anti-labor labor secretary since Reagan's pick of Ray Donovan back in the day, it's clear that he's on the side of the billionaires and the big corporations.
So can we finally stop calling him a populist?
-Thom
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