United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain reasserted his backing for President Biden after being acknowledged by the president in his State of the Union address.
“Joe Biden has a track record of helping people and supporting working-class individuals, while Donald Trump has a history of prioritizing himself and advocating for the billionaire class,” Fain said said in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” Saturday with hosts Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez, and Michael Steele.
In his State of the Union speech, Biden referred to Fain as a “great friend and a great labor leader.” Fain, who endorsed endorsed Biden in January, attended the speech as a guest of the White House.
“[W]hen we make our endorsements… we don’t – we’re not telling our members who they’re gonna vote for,” Fain said in the MSNBC interview. “We’re taking facts, and taking the body of work and giving it – telling our members, ‘Look, we look at these things. This is a person that we believe is going to represent our interest the best, and represent working class interest the best.’”
Biden delivered a passionate and energetic State of the Union speech Thursday night. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who sat behind Biden during his speech, expressed his disapproval for the address.
“People are saying that I made funny facial expressions. I tried to keep a poker face, but it was very difficult. I disagreed so vehemently with so much of what he said, and I think the people back home did as well,” Johnson told reporters after the speech.
“There’s a lot of memes, I guess, going around tonight about my facial expressions. I did not like the speech, I don’t think the American people liked it, and there wasn’t much I could do about that. I guess I didn’t hide that very well,” Johnson told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
Biden also went after Trump multiple times during his speech, a few days after the former president’s last major rival in the GOP presidential primary race, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, dropped out.
