7 months ago
42
When Donald Trump’s campaign announced last week that he would go to Michigan to speak to former and current union members instead of attending the second Republican presidential primary debate, reasonable people knew there would be a catch—probably a big one. Indeed: Trump spoke at a nonunion auto parts facility at the invitation of management, with few union members verifiably in the audience. But he got what he wanted, because speaking to union members was never the point. Getting media coverage claiming he would do so was the goal all along, and the credulous media played along.
“It wasn't clear how many auto workers were in the crowd for the speech,” The Detroit News reported, adding that one person with a “union members for Trump” sign admitted she wasn’t a union member, and that another person with an “auto workers for Trump” sign wasn’t an autoworker. The relatively low number of actual union members in the crowd was despite heavy recruitment, Alex Press reported at Jacobin. Chris Marchione, political director of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 1M in Michigan, told Press, “My cousins are all UAW members. Every one of them got a text message asking if they wanted to go. The organizers are picking who they want. They wanted prospective attendees to pass along their social media profiles. Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off.”
