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Republican candidates for president blamed Joe Biden’s handling of the economy for the strike afflicting the US auto industry, as the start of the second debate ahead of the 2024 primaries was dominated by the fate of blue-collar workers.
The 2024 rivals criticised the US president on Wednesday night for taking the historic step of joining a picket line of union workers demanding higher pay from car companies in Michigan this week.
“Biden showed up on that picket line, but why are those workers actually there? It’s because of all the spending that he has pushed through in the economy that has raised the inflation,” Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, said.
“He doesn’t belong on a picket line, he belongs on an unemployment line,” said Mike Pence, the former vice-president. “Bidenomics has failed . . . Joe Biden’s Green New Deal agenda is good for Beijing and bad for Detroit.”
Former US president Donald Trump, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination with a commanding lead in the polls, did not appear at the debate, preferring to go to Michigan for a rally with non-union workers in the car sector.
“You built this country, you love this country, and you are the ones who make this country run,” Trump said to cheers from the crowd, as he attacked car companies and railed against the Biden administration for its electric vehicle push.
But Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, slammed Trump for skipping the debate in California.
“Donald Trump is missing an action — he should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record where they added $7.8tn to the debt that set the stage for the inflation that we have,” the Florida governor said.
Speaking in Michigan, Trump begged for the endorsement of Shawn Fain, the United Automobile Workers president.
“Get your union leaders to endorse me, and I’ll take care of the rest,” Trump told the rally.
Fain has withheld an endorsement for Biden, saying it must be “earned”. But he has been openly critical of Trump, declining to meet the former president this week in Michigan and telling CNN there was a “pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a non-union business”.
“All you have to do is look at his track record — his track record speaks for itself,” Fain said.
Trump has now skipped two Republican presidential primary debates, and is increasingly looking to position himself as the presumed GOP candidate, targeting his attacks on Biden rather than his fellow Republicans. Trump and his allies have argued that he does not need to appear at the debates given the extent of his lead.
Wednesday’s debate was being broadcast by Fox News from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, a symbolic venue for the party, even though traditional Reagan-era conservatism has made way for Trump-inspired populism and isolationism in recent years.
Since the first Republican debate on August 23, Trump’s lead in national polling over DeSantis has expanded further, with 54 per cent of the party’s primary voters backing the former president, while 13.8 per cent support the Florida governor, according to the 538.com average.
Haley has since moved into third place with support from 6.3 per cent of voters, matching Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech investor.
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