On Labor Day, the federal holiday upon which we take a day to honor the blood, sweat, and tears of America’s appallingly overworked and underpaid workers, the President of the United States took to Twitter to attack the head of the nation’s largest federation of unions, Richard Trumka of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The president’s attack was inspired by Trumka’s Sunday remarks, in which he rightfully accused the president of hurting American workers more than having helped them. “Gas prices have been up since the first year. So overall, workers aren’t doing as well” said Trumka on FOX News Sunday.
He went on to slam Trump for failing to produce his promised infrastructure bill that would have created new jobs and for overturning health and safety regulations that keep workers from getting hurt on the job.
Trumka also criticized the President’s efforts to poison our economic and diplomatic relationship with our Canadian neighbor, saying that any reworking of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) must include Canada.
The president, infamous for his inability to accept even the slightest criticism without publicly firing back and turning it into one of his endless feuds, took to Twitter this morning and shamefully blamed Trumka himself for the decline of the American union.
Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, represented his union poorly on television this weekend. Some of the things he said were so against the working men and women of our country, and the success of the U.S. itself, that it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly. A Dem!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2018
There are many factors that prompted the decline of the unions in the United States, but one of the main culprits has been the crippling of union power by “right to work” laws and other anti-labor legislation passed by the right-wing ghouls that dominate America’s manufacturing states and now the federal government.
So it’s disgustingly hypocritical but unsurprising to see Trump, a man who has spent his entire career screwing over workers and union-busting, blaming the unions for the things that he and his fellow Republicans have inflicted upon the nation.
Nothing shows the American worker how little the President actually cares about them like attacking one of their biggest defenders on the holiday that’s supposed to celebrate them, though all the union-busting legislation he’s signed should have been enough of a sign.
It’s time to run the oligarchs and their bootlicking servants out of our government and replace them with true progressives who will uplift the American worker and give them the dignity and the security they deserve.
