Former President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0will travel to the battleground state of Michigan next week to meet with\u00a0striking autoworkers\u00a0instead of participating in the second Republican presidential debate, a person familiar with his plans said Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, who also skipped the first debate last month, has signaled that he is already focused on the\u00a02024 election\u00a0against President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0as he maintains a wide lead against his GOP rivals in primary polls. In recent days, he has been leaning hard into the strike, painting himself as sympathetic to the workers and accusing Biden of trying to destroy the car industry by expanding electric cars and other green energy policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sept. 27 trip, first reported by The New York Times, will also include a primetime speech, according to the person familiar with the plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity before they were made public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the date others in the GOP field will gather at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, for the cycle\u2019s\u00a0second primary debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When his fellow GOP contenders gathered in Milwaukee last month, Trump instead took part in a pretaped interview with Tucker Carlson, which aired on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter during the debate\u2019s first hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has long sought to paint himself as a fighter for the \u201cforgotten men and women\u201d of the working class and spent much of his 2016 campaign campaigning in Rust Belt towns suffering from the shift away from mining and manufacturing. Earlier this year, he\u00a0visited East Palestine, Ohio,\u00a0after a train derailment, a visit aides have considered a key moment in his campaign as he worked to recover from midterm losses, and as they tried to move his focus away from his 2020 loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesperson, said Monday: \u201cDonald Trump is going to Michigan next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn\u2019t spend his entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn. Instead of standing with workers, Trump cut taxes for the super-wealthy while auto companies shuttered their doors and shipped American jobs overseas.\u201d Moussa argued that Trump would have let auto companies go bankrupt during the financial crisis rather than bail them out, as President Barack Obama did in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Monday, the United Auto Workers and Detroit\u2019s Big Three carmakers resumed talks aimed at ending a strike\u00a0now in its fourth day. Stellantis described the discussion as \u201cconstructive.\u201d A spokesperson for General Motors said representatives of the company and the United Auto Workers were continuing to negotiate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dave Green, a UAW regional director in Ohio and Indiana, said the former president\u2019s actions during his time in office give him \u201czero credibility\u201d with organized labor now, adding that he doesn\u2019t see a way the UAW would ever endorse Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHis only intention here is to try and get votes for himself. And also divide our members against each other using political rhetoric,\u201d Green told The AP on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u00a0earlier this summer traveled to Michigan,\u00a0where the Oakland County GOP honored him as its Man of the Decade. Asked about the strike in an interview that aired Sunday, he told NBC News that \u201cauto workers will not have any jobs\u201d because \u201celectric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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