In Sturgis, South Dakota, Trump-supporting bikers assembled to vow that they would never ever buy another Harley-Davidson after new Trump tariffs and the resulting trade war led to a Harley decision to move some motorcycle manufacturing to Europe rather than pay punitive European import penalties. (Harley will continue to manufacture American-distributed bikes in the United States; this distinction seems lost on many.)
Chris Cox, the founder of the ubiquitous and often egregiously silly Bikers for Trump, is among those most outraged at the Harley-Davidson decision.
Chris Cox, the founder of the Bikers for Trump group that has organized demonstrations for Mr. Trump across the country since he was a candidate, was using the Sturgis gathering this year to drum up more support for Mr. Trump and to mobilize opposition to Harley. He wants shareholders and riders to come together and petition the company to promise it will give generous severance packages to workers who might get fired as it moves manufacturing to other countries.
If you would like to demonstrate your own support for Trump, Mr. Cox has a T-shirt for that.
While he used to sell American-made T-shirts, the $20 Trump shirts he was selling outside his R.V. were made in Haiti. The American-made shirts proved to be a hard sell.
“If I get a T-shirt made in the U.S.A., it’s going to cost about $8 more,” Mr. Cox said. “I looked far and wide to try to get a shirt made in America, it’s just they get you, they gouge you.”
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Architect of health insurance mandate leads GOP 2012 field:
As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney basically wrote the blueprint for health care reform bill signed into law by President Obama this past March.
Now, as a likely contender for his party's presidential nomination in 2012, he's leading the field, according to the most recent Clarus Group survey conducted last month. Romney gets 26% of the GOP vote compared to 21% for Mike Huckabee. Newt Gingrich is at 14% and Sarah Palin as at 12%.
The cognitive dissonance is deafening: GOPers have declared the health insurance mandate public enemy number one, but more of them support the guy who helped make them become reality than any other candidate. Sure, Romney now tries to pretend he hates the mandate, but he passed into law as governor, embraced it during the 2008 primary campaign, and he wouldn't be able to walk away from it in 2012.
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