Fake auto workers recently caught at a Sen. J.D. Vance rally present Vice President Kamala Harris with an ideal opportunity to expose dark plans to yank hundreds of billions of dollars from those attendees' purported industry, according to a new political analysis.
Michigan rally attendees who sported "Auto Workers for Trump" T-shirts — but told the Detroit News they were not autoworkers at all — reveal a disturbing truth about what former President Donald Trump intends for those on the production line, the New Republic argued Wednesday.
"You can spot an even flimsier facade if you consider the actual policy arguments that Donald Trump and Vance are making to autoworkers about the future of their industry," wrote commentator Greg Sargent.
"That facade is so Potemkin-like that it gives Democrats an opportunity to put them on the defensive on an issue involving working-class economics — if Harris’s allies are wise enough to seize on it."
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To make his case, Sargent points to a manufacturing plant in Michigan, a $500 million grant it received from the Biden administration to convert to electric car production, and a question the Detroit News repeatedly tried to get Vance to answer.
The question: Would a Trump-Vance administration honor the investment?
Sargent described Vance's reply — “We certainly want to invest in Michigan autoworkers as much as possible" — as "sleazy rhetorical subterfuge" for reasons Democrats have yet to vocalize.
"Democrats have blasted Vance for sneering at the Lansing grant, given that it is expected to preserve 700 jobs in Michigan," Sargent wrote.
"But what’s even more controversial — or should be, anyway — is that Vance is dissembling wildly about his and Trump’s broader intentions toward autoworkers in Michigan, the Rust Belt, and beyond."
Vance's claim that Trump won't “take any money that’s going to Michigan autoworkers" does not acknowledge the former president's position on the Inflation Reduction Act pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the broader industry, Sargent argued.
Trump has said he would stop new spending and vowed to end the “green new scam,” which Sargent describes as Trump’s "dumb shorthand for those policies."
Jesse Jenkins, a Princeton professor who tracks IRA spending, told Sargent hundreds of billions of dollars could be lost to the auto industry should Trump follow through on that promise.
“The vast majority of the money is still vulnerable to repeal,” Jenkins reportedly said. “That would cause cancellation of dozens of projects across the country that will employ tens of thousands of people at manufacturing jobs just like those at the Lansing plant.”
Sargent argued there could be no better symbol of this rhetorical bait-and-switch then Trump supporters claiming to be auto workers.
"When Vance faces tough questioning about the Trump-Vance agenda — and the impact it would have on the future of auto manufacturing in the Rust Belt — he has nothing to offer but dissembling and evasions," Sargent wrote.
"Not to mention events held against a backdrop of 'Auto Workers for Trump' T-shirts that don’t even contain autoworkers inside them."
