Trump Freaks out over Firefighters Union Endorsement
IAFF's endorsement of Joe Biden causes Trump to lose his cool
After kicking off his Presidential campaign with a high dollar fundraiser hosted by the union-busting CEO of Comcast and a union-busting lawyer from Philadelphia, Vice President Joe Biden locked up his first union endorsement on Monday.
The endorsement came from the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), which represents 316,000 professional firefighters in the United States and Canada, and was expected as the IAFF has a long history of supporting Biden. According to the IAFF in the lead up to the endorsement, the union hired renown pollster Zogby Strategies to poll 160,000 of their members, who are likely to vote in their state’s primary, about who they wanted the union to support. Below is a video from the IAFF explaining why they decided to endorse Biden.
The endorsement makes the IAFF the first union to get off the sidelines and make an endorsement in the 2020 election.
The IAFF’s decision to support Biden didn’t sit well with Trump. In a series of tweets Trump attacked union leaders saying that he will “never get the support of Dues Crazy union leadership, those people who rip-off their membership with ridiculously high dues, medical and other expenses while being paid a fortune.” He then followed that up with another tweet referring to the firefighter leadership as “Dues Sucking.”
I’ll never get the support of Dues Crazy union leadership, those people who rip-off their membership with ridiculously high dues, medical and other expenses while being paid a fortune. But the members love Trump. They look at our record economy, tax & reg cuts, military etc. WIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2019
The Dues Sucking firefighters leadership will always support Democrats, even though the membership wants me. Some things never change!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2019
After adopting some of the issues that are important to union members, like restricting free trade, Trump conned some union members into supporting him. However since he took office, he has been at war almost constantly with organized labor. Just in the last two years, he announced his support for a National Right to Work law, signed an executive order to limit collective bargaining, attempted to bust a federal union, and proposed eliminating federal pensions. He also appointed the deciding vote against public sector unions in the Janus v AFSCME Supreme Court case. Trump has also taken to Twitter to publicly attack the UAW following General Motors decision to close a number of auto plants, attacked AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka accusing him of working “against the working men and women of our country, and the success of the U.S. itself,", and got into a very public Twitter war with United Steelworkers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones after Trump failed on his campaign promise to save Carrier Air Conditioning jobs in Indiana.
Biden continued his campaign launch on Monday with a rally at a Teamsters hall in Pittsburgh. At the rally, the former Vice President was joined on stage by United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard. Although Gerard attended the rally, he has said that USW does not plan to make an endorsement until later in the campaign.