President Barack Obama will soon be campaigning on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris in several states critical to the presidential election.
According to Eric Schultz, a senior adviser for the Harris campaign, Obama will be doing “everything he can to help elect Vice President Harris” and other Democrats on the ballot in the month leading up to the Nov. 5 election.
Obama’s first event for Harris will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday. He won the state in both of his presidential campaigns, as did President Joe Biden in 2020, but Donald Trump won the Keystone State by a narrow margin in the 2016 election.
The most recent Democratic president to win back-to-back presidential terms, Obama is enormously popular nationally and within the Democratic Party. His fundraising events backing Harris’ campaign have raised at least $76 million so far.
Obama was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention in August, where he referred to Trump as “a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”
The campaign trail appearances will mean two figures who have served in the presidency will be working on behalf of Harris. Biden endorsed her campaign after he left the race and has held campaign events in support of the Democratic nominee. Former President Jimmy Carter, who recently turned 100, is also backing Harris.
The only living Republican ex-president, George W. Bush, has not endorsed any candidate (and did not endorse Trump in 2016 or 2020).
On the same day Obama’s plans were revealed, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk announced that he will attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Trump adviser Steve Bannon (L) watches as Donald Trump greets Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla CEO, before a policy and strategy forum with executives on Feb. 3, 2017, in Washington, D.C.
Musk is worth an estimated $261 billion, and has a history of anti-union views.
In an August conversation with Trump, the two billionaires laughed together while discussing how easy it is to fire striking workers.
“I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ’That’s OK. You’re all gone,'” Trump said.
The conversation prompted the United Auto Workers union to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board for “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”
“Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement.
Musk has also said that allowing workers to unionize creates “lords and peasants” and is backing a conservative effort to gut the NLRB’s enforcement powers.
Trump demonstrated hostility to labor rights while he served as president and despite labeling himself as pro-worker, failed to side with striking workers on multiple occasions.
Musk is also bankrolling a political action committee to help elect Trump. In the past, Musk donated millions to a conservative group called Citizens for Sanity, which was led by former employees of ex-Trump administration official Stephen Miller. Miller has long been connected to white supremacist causes.
On social media, Musk has frequently promoted conspiracy theories and racist memes in support of Trump and other conservative causes. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns, has seen a resurgence of pro-Nazi accounts since Musk took over the business.
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