In 2016, coal miners and their union bought into the false promises offered up by Donald Trump that he would somehow turn the coal industry around. The United Mine Workers of America gave nearly 40 percent of its contributions to Republicans that year. This year is a different story:
“We have one primary criteria for making contributions to any candidate of either party: Do they support our fight to preserve our retirees’ pensions? If the answer is yes, then we support that candidate,” said Phil Smith, the UMWA’s spokesman.
That one primary criteria has led to nearly 84 percent of the union’s political contributions going to Democrats in 2018, close to a 20-point increase from 2016.
It would be difficult to overstate the degree to which Donald Trump concretely sold many of his supporters on a set of lies about what he’d do for them and then betrayed them.
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