Trump plans return visits to Wisconsin during the pandemic he’s exacerbated through lies, but long before the novel coronavirus Trump was lying to the Midwest. Catherine Rampell writes that Trump said he would bring jobs back to Ohio’s manufacturing workers. Instead, he deserted them:
“It’s incredible what’s happened to the area,” he said Monday, in remarks at the White House previewing his talking points about supposedly resuscitated Ohio factories. “It’s booming now.”
It’s a lie.
Not only because the poorly managed pandemic recession has destroyed 720,000 manufacturing jobs on net nationwide, including 38,000 in Ohio alone. Also because even before covid-19 broke out, Trump had deserted Ohio’s manufacturing workers.?Just ask the laid-off workers themselves whether they agree that their fates represent, in Vice President Pence’s terms, “promises made, promises kept.”
“They’ve betrayed the American worker, they’ve betrayed all those people who voted for them and supported them,” says Dave Green, the former president of the United Auto Workers Local 1112, which represented workers at a now-defunct General Motors plant in Lordstown, about an hour away from the presidential debate stage.
These promises were false promises, preying on desperate workers’ hopes. They weren’t Trump’s first lies, and they won’t be his last.