A week ago in our column “Are The GOP Debates Useless?” we predicted that former
President Donald Trump would use his counter-programmed rally in Detroit to relaunch the themes of his successful 2016 campaign:
In a brilliant stroke of counterprograming, former President Trump won’t be on the debate stage, he will be in Detroit speaking to 500 current and former union workers, including plumbers, pipefitters, electricians, as well as striking autoworkers. Rather than going tit-for-tat on the arcana of marginal tax rates and the other stuff that occupies these establishment media-run debates Trump will be in Michigan very likely repeating the themes of the 2016 speeches that made him an unlikely working-class hero.
We were right and President Trump did not disappoint us.
After touring the Drake Enterprises auto parts factory, President Trump pledged to the crowd gathered with signs bearing “Union Members for Trump” and “Auto Workers for Trump” that, with him in office, the future of the automobile will be “Made In America.”
Here are some of the highlights of President Trump’s speech. (To watch the speech online use this link to CSPAN 2.)
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “I’m thrilled to be back with the workers, UAW Members, and proud patriots of the Great State of Michigan. Here in Michigan and across the country tonight there are thousands of auto workers and skilled tradesmen worried about the future and what the future holds. I want to salute these truly great Americans who do not get the credit they deserve.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “You built this country, you love this country, and you are the ones who make this country run.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “I want a future that protects American labor, not foreign labor. A future that puts Americans’ dreams over foreign profits. A future that raises American wages…not squanders it all to build up foreign countries that hate us on the other side of the world.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Joe Biden came to Michigan to pose for photos at the picket line. But it’s his policies that send Michigan autoworkers to the unemployment line.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Joe Biden claims to be the most pro-union president in history but his entire career has been an act of economic treason—shipping millions of American jobs overseas while taking money from foreign nations hand over fist.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Under Crooked Joe Biden…the workers of America are getting screwed.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The only time Joe Biden has ever gotten his hands dirty is when he's taking cash from foreign countries.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Crooked Joe Biden backed NAFTA, he backed the horrendous Trans-Pacific Partnership, he backed Barack Hussein Obama’s atrocious Korea trade deal.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Biden’s cruel and ridiculous electric vehicle mandate will spell the death of the U.S. auto industry.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “For autoworkers, Biden’s forced electric vehicle transition is a transition to hell. It’s a transition to unemployment and to inflation.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “A vote for Crooked Joe means the future of the auto industry will be MADE IN CHINA. My pledge to every automaker is this: a vote for President Trump means the future of the automobile will be MADE IN AMERICA!”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “I put everything on the line to fight for you, I’ve risked it all to defend the working class from the corrupt political class that has spent decades sucking the life, wealth, and blood out of this country.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “I will not allow, under any circumstances, the American automobile industry to die.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Under a Trump administration, gasoline engines will be allowed, and sex changes for children will be banned!”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “If you want to save your livelihoods and your way of life, then you need to send a message and join the ultimate strike against the globalist class, by casting your vote for Donald J. Trump.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “I will unleash American energy, stop the ban on the internal combustion engine, and we will DRILL, BABY, DRILL!”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We're going to take their money, we're going to take their factories, we're going to rebuild the industrial bedrock of this country…By the time this battle is over, the rusted-out factories will not be here in Michigan, they'll be in Beijing, Shanghai, and other parts of the world.”
Trump Detroit Speech
Reagan Library Debate
2016 Election
2016 Trump campaign
forgotten Americans
union voters
Ron DeSantis
2024 Republican presidential field
trade
Made in America
Boy, that ol' George Rasley, he may not be too bright, but he sure hates the facts.