United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said his union was “not going to rush” an endorsement for Vice President Harris after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race Sunday.
The UAW in January endorsed Biden, who endorsed Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee Sunday after he exited the race amid concerns about his age and mental acuity following a disastrous debate at the the end of June.
Several major labor unions have endorsed Harris since the announcement, including the AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers, the American Federation of Teachers, the United Food and Commercial Workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
But the UAW is not yet on that list.
“We’re not going to rush in and just throw it out there. We want to have fruitful discussions when we meet [with Harris’s team]. And I think it’s important we do that. We owe that to them,” Fain told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, a former Biden press secretary.
Fain also said the past few days and weeks had been “emotional," calling Biden the “greatest president of my lifetime, the most pro-labor president of my lifetime.”
He also said Biden did the “honorable thing,” and took aim at former President Trump.
“Can you ever imagine Donald Trump putting his ego aside and doing what’s right for the country? It would never happen,” Fain added.
Fain and Trump have repeatedly taken swipes at each other this election cycle. During his speech at the Republican National Convention last week, Trump called for Fain to be fired. The union hit back on the social platform X, calling the former president “a scab and a billionaire.”
The labor leader also praised Harris for walking the picket line with UAW workers in 2019 when Trump was in office, saying he “sure as hell wasn’t on the picket line.”
