Donald Trump did it as a candidate and he will clearly do it as president too: Use his platform as leader of the free world to demonize everyday Americans. Ol' twitter thumbs just couldn't stand being called to the carpet by an Indiana union chief who noted Trump "lied his ass off" about saving 1,100 Carrier jobs. It was more like 800.
That assertion put the president of United Steelworkers 1999, Chuck Jones, at the receiving end of our petulant president-elect's ire. How dare someone fact check his lie! Trump denigrated Jones for doing "a terrible job," tweeting, "No wonder companies flee country!"
In case you're wondering, this isn't even remotely normal behavior, even though it's vintage Trump.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University, said she didn’t know of any similar high-level personal spat involving a union leader since President Ronald Reagan’s 1980s standoff with the air traffic controllers union.
“One of the things that the US is known for is that you can criticize the president and nothing happens to you,” she said. “It’s OK to criticize the president and Trump is making clear that it’s not OK.”
A couple of weeks ago, former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson told NPR how hard they had worked in W’s White House to make certain President Bush didn't mention the names of average folks, not even in a positive light.
When you're president, if you, for example, mention a private citizen as someone that you dislike or - it is crushing. You know, the president can destroy someone, can discredit them.
You can say that again. In fact, there’s nothing Trump's minions love more than dragging someone into the public square to tar and feather them. Just ask the young college student who in 2015 had the nerve to question whether candidate Trump was “a friend to women.” As for Chuck Jones, Trump fanatics are already threatening him and his family. Jones isn't a twitter guy, but he's been taking a boatload of phone calls, cigarette in hand, in the back office of the local 1999.
“People want to say, ‘Hey, I know what kind of car you drive. I know you’ve got kids. I know where you live,’” he said. “I ain’t worried about that.”
This is the type of treatment any one of us could be in for if we follow Jones' example and show just a little too much integrity. In a must read op-ed in the Washington Post, Jones described his motivations for calling Trump out after listening to him mislead his fellow steelworkers about how many of their jobs would be saved.
When he spoke at our plant, he acted like no one was going to lose their job. People went crazy for him. They thought, because of Trump, I’m going to be able to provide for my family.
All the while, I’m sitting there, thinking that’s not what the damn numbers say. Trump let people believe that they were going to have a livelihood in that facility. He let people breathe easy. When I told our members the next day, they were devastated.
In Gerson’s NPR interview, the former W staffer expressed his hope that Trump had people around him who would "feel comfortable confronting him" and telling him he can't pick fights with everyday Americans. Don't count on it.
Trump's henchmen have been out in full force this week defending exactly the type of behavior Gerson said could “destroy” people. On Trump’s spat with Jones, RNC communications director Sean Spicer told NPR, "I think [Trump] took it personally and he wants people to know that he's not going to sit back and take insults like that.”
Kellyanne Conway managed to be the most repugnant, telling MSNBC, “He's just correcting the record.” Really? Trump's the one who lied in the first place, Kellyanne. Maybe you missed that just like you missed all those white supremacists your campaign was reaching out to.
Honestly, these people are shameless and Trump hasn't a soul around him who will serve as a check on his conscience, which went missing at birth.
If there's any silver lining to be had in this, it's that Jones appears to be able to take the heat. He’s also a battle-tested union guy from the heartland—exactly the type of person that Trump supposedly said he would champion as president. On the trail, Trump almost exclusively picked fights with people of color like Khizr and Ghazala Khan and women such as Alicia Machado and those who stepped forward to say they had been assaulted by him.
As we have learned, many Trump voters don't consider immigrants and other minorities "everyday Americans," along with all those Californians (like myself) who don't deserve to be counted in the popular vote.
But Chuck Jones, he counts, in their view. White, male, working-class. He's one of their own, regardless of whom he voted for. Looks like no one is immune to Trump’s wrath. That’s a word to the wise for any Trump voter who thought otherwise.