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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Donald Trump's visit to Michigan to speak to the Union workers, only to find out the audience was compelled to be there by their bosses and weren't even in a worker's union. The dissect the impeachment process the GOP is trying to undertake, and then answer a number of great questions from the Muckrake community.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the MuttGregg Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates.
Next, I'm here with Nick Halseman.
How are you doing, bud?
I was welcoming you to the world of guitar players since I also play the guitar.
And I remember those times when you were trying to develop those calces.
But you know, the benefit of it is when you do get the calces on your hand, you can pick up hot lids of pots without a glove.
I got blisters on my fingers!
That's all I got to say about that.
All right, everybody, we have a jam-packed show.
For anybody, by the way, who's listening to the preview of this, come on over to the good side.
Join us.
Go to patreon.com slash mycraigpodcast.
Nick, I will say this.
Last night, we hosted a live reaction show to the second Republican debate.
I have since gone over the coverage of the major networks, the major pundits, all of that.
To be so bold, I think we gave the best coverage that anybody gave of this debate, I think, hands down.
I think people should come and join us at patreon.com slash mccrakepodcast.
And more importantly, we had tons of people there and they all enjoyed it as well.
We had a good time.
Yeah.
And plus, you know, don't forget, these shows are longer and much more in-depth on the Fridays when you get them from the Patreon side.
So, you know, you get much better value.
Join us.
The thousands upon thousands of you who are listening to this preview.
This show's packed.
Listen, we gotta talk.
A new fighter might be entering the GOP primary race.
We gotta talk about that.
The government might be shutting down.
We have an impeachment inquiry that is absolutely embarrassing.
The Trump Organization has been ordered to be dissolved by a judge.
There is tons and tons to talk about today.
Go to patreon.com slash my great podcast.
But Nick, we gotta start with a couple of interesting tidbits that have been happening.
We've been covering the labor actions around the country.
Joe Biden this week went to Ypsilanti, which for the record, is one of my favorite town names.
In the country.
I actually wrote a short story with the name Ypsilanti in it because of how good it sounds.
Joe Biden went and joined the United Auto Workers on the picket line, the first president to ever do so.
I've said before, I'm glad that he did it.
I'm glad that he felt it necessary to go and do it.
I wrote a sub stack today about how he must have felt the pressure and how it is starting to affect the feedback loop, which is something I've talked about on this podcast and elsewhere.
I was really happy to see it.
And then Donald Trump said that he was going to go talk to the union.
And guess what, Nick?
He did not do that.
I don't think they wanted to hear from him.
I don't think they wanted to hear from him at all.
You know, but we've seen this in the past.
He's always staged these things.
He's brought people in to sort of pretend to be fervid, you know, fervid, right word?
Trump's fervent.
Yes.
But like, yeah, there's a whatever the word that is wrong.
I'm going to use because it's Trump.
So, you know, just it's all it's all a scam, you know, from from the having, you know, fake documents on a table that he's pretending or something to this.
The worst part about it is literally we know you know how they found out that this these weren't union workers, right?
They decided to ask them a couple of questions, the reporters, and they quickly confessed to the crime or whatever.
So it was so easy to figure this out that it's embarrassing.
Yeah, so what happened here, to go ahead and get people up to speed, you know, Biden laid a lot of skin on the line going with the autoworkers, and we say it all the time, Nick, we call balls and strikes, we'll tell you guys when Biden does something that is laudatory, and we'll tell you when he does something that isn't great.
This is one of the best things he's done as a president, honestly.
The first sitting president to go on a picket line.
Meanwhile, Trump has said for days that he was going to go to Detroit.
He was going to go talk to these union workers.
And what did our media do, Nick?
Did they fact-check this?
Did they go and ask any questions about whether or not the UAW was going to have him?
No, they did not!
They just went ahead and reported left and right that he was going to go to striking auto workers.
He didn't.
What he actually did instead of going to the UAW, who told him that he was not welcome, they said in so many words, and this is one of my favorite quotes in a long time, that he is a servant of the billionaire class, which Ring-a-ding-ding!
Nailed it.
What he actually did is he went to Clinton Township in Michigan.
He went and visited with a group called Drake Enterprises, which is a distinctly anti-union shop.
And Nick, do you think the workers themselves invited Donald Trump to come and speak to them?
I'm gonna go in on them and say no.
No, they did not!
No, that was actually shop boss Nathan Stimple.
That's right, Donald Trump said that he was going to go talk to striking autoworkers and instead went to address a non-union shop at the behest and invitation of a boss shop.
Congratulations, you couldn't get this more wrong.
You could not do this in a worse way.
And we have a clip here, and I want to talk about exactly why this happened, and what's occurring here.
Because Donald Trump didn't cook this up.
He didn't come up with this thing.
He's an absolute idiot.
But let's hear from the 43.
Before we get that, that was my question for you, and that's why we work so well together.
You already answered it.
It was basically, yeah, I wonder, Trump probably had no idea.
No idea!
He still thought he talked to the union workers, I'm sure, today.
He doesn't know any different.
He had no idea what he was doing.
The people around him created the spectacle.
They created a bunch of fake signs.
And you'll notice, if you see the signs, it's like, auto workers support Trump.
Union auto workers support Trump.
The first of all weren't even like union made signs.
They were being held by people who aren't auto workers and sure as hell aren't union members.
Nick, what do you think happens if you're a non-union member and your boss brings in a president or former president to talk to the group?
Do you think you have a choice about whether or not you're going there?
Yeah, no, you don't have a choice.
No, no, you don't.
But what's worse is that the people that are working for Trump don't have a choice either.
They're so afraid.
They can't go to him and say, you know what?
I know you want to talk to the unions.
They don't want to talk to you.
They can't tell him that.
So they have to do the make-believe thing and just let him have no clothes.
And did our media call them out on it?
No, they did not.
Let's hear from the great union-loving 45th president of the United States of America.
In other words, your current negotiations don't mean as much as you think.
I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets, but I don't think you're picketing for the right thing.
But if they endorse me, your leadership, you can tell them I said it, although I have a feeling they may be watching tonight.
I don't what?
Yeah, so what Donald Trump did was he went in front of a non-union group of workers talking to them as if he was talking to the UAW and said, hey, you know, I don't think you're striking for the right reasons.
Meanwhile, they cheered for him because they're competitors.
They don't support the strike, or at least they're terrified to admit they support the strike in front of their bosses.
And so he got these applause lines, which could project to his supporters around the country, oh, the UAW is actually on Trump's side.
And Nick, what did he promote as a solution?
He didn't promote better pay.
He didn't promote any of that.
He promoted economic nationalism.
That was a quote that kept coming in to this entire thing.
Like, I promise you economic nationalism if I become the next president.
Well, guess what, Nick?
A lot of union workers and a lot of organized labor, probably since the beginning of organized labor, have been undermined by the promise of economic nationalism.
If you just play ball with the country, oh, we've got a war to fight right now.
If you go ahead and work and don't strike, if you go ahead and do this out of a patronly duty, Nick, a lot of people listening to this right now are very familiar and they probably hear their boss's voice in their head.
We're a family.
If you just do this for us right now, we'll get down the road, we'll take care of this.
What Trump did here is he spread disinformation aggressively, weaponized disinformation that was created for him by his billionaire donors, and he went ahead and put it out there as faux populism, and our media ate that shit up and didn't question it for a moment.
Well, but in that soundbite, he says, you're not doing it for the right reasons.
And I think he kind of caught himself realizing, well, I'm actually supposed to be here to get their votes, right?
So I shouldn't be telling them that.
Because, you know, the reasons are pretty legitimate.
And again, like, I am extremely, what's the word I'm looking for?
Sympathetic to the unions.
I'm much more on the union side than I'm not, and we have to remember why we have unions in the first place.
You know, coming from Chicago, obviously there's a certain, you know, perspective you might have on this, and there are times when unions are able to negotiate such strong deals for themselves, and it does make it difficult when times are lean.
I get it, and there should be some more of a back and forth between them, but The problem here is too long goes in between those negotiations and then they become outdated.
And now the workers are exploited for X amount of time until they finally can get a strike going to make up for those years of being mistreated.
And so that's where we're here.
And again, I was actually encouraged to hear that they wanted a 40% increase.
They came back at 20.
And so to me, that sounds like great.
They're going to get that increase.
It's going to be pretty substantial.
They just got to figure out some numbers here.
So we'll see.
Maybe.
And, you know, it's a win-win in either way.
Like, if there's some reconciliation that happens, if they bring the bosses up and they get some sort of a pay increase or some sort of a consideration, that sends a very clear message to everybody around the country.
Because there are new unions being formed every single day.
There are new possible strikes and walkouts that are getting ready to happen.
We just saw a couple more get authorization.
There are going to be votes.
And if it doesn't work and it becomes protracted, you know, class warfare, solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.
But what happens is that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement more or less was created from the very beginning to be a faux populistic movement.
Like you said, there are reasons why these workers are pissed off, why Americans are pissed off.
They've been screwed over time and time again for decades.
Going back to the late 70s into Reagan's 1980s, they have just been absolutely royally screwed.
Eventually, you reach a point where you're so screwed and you're so tired, you're just like, why wouldn't I strike?
Why wouldn't I push back against this?
What Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have done is that they have intentionally captured a lot of that pissed off, you know, that is actually deserved, and they've diverted it.
They've said, you know, it's the deep state, it's the people behind the scenes, it's Joe Biden, it's Barack Obama, it's Hillary Clinton, it's whatever.
Instead of pointing at the people who have actually done this, who are the people who fund Donald Trump, who fund the MAGA movement, who go ahead and populate the entire political apparatus of it, And what it does is it's slight of hand, and it totally manipulates people and takes the eye off the ball, which is why Donald Trump was president of the United States and why the MAGA movement is what it is, because it is an intentional capturing of those necessary energies.
I mean, you said it great.
I can't answer that at all.
So, you know, hopefully they get that straightened away.
But again, and I just want to reiterate how important it was for Biden to do what he did as well.
Again, it's a cynical ploy to get more votes politically, but it also speaks volumes to where the mindset should be for most of the Americans here.
What we talked about earlier in the week, Nick, when we started talking about this event getting ready to happen, you know, usually if Joe Biden or a president was in the White House, right?
Let's just say generic Democratic president X, right?
Like just a replacement level Democratic president.
When there would be a strike, they would have a moment where they're like, what do you say about this?
And it's like, well, you send out your press secretary and you say the president supports labor and he'll be keeping an eye on the situation, right?
That's what you do.
Instead, they're like, Mr. President, this is Michigan.
I don't know how to tell you this, but it's kind of important nowadays.
And on top of that, like there is overwhelming support in the United States of America among the population for unions and labor action.
You have to get out there.
That's unprecedented.
That tells us that there is a movement here, and when you start looking at politics from a bottom-up as opposed to top-down, Joe Biden wouldn't have done this a couple of years ago.
You know?
I mean, like, the trade wins have changed.
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