John Jefferson
Tim Walz called out the “damn lie” that he is “in the pocket” of the labor unions while speaking at a Labor Day rally on the presidential election campaign trail.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee was talking to the crowd at Laborfest in Milwaukee yesterday when he hit back with a zingy response to a claim being pushed by some Republicans.
“Republicans came up to me in one of my campaigns, and they said: ‘Tim is in the pocket of organized labor,’” he said.
“I said: ‘That’s a damn lie – I am the pocket.’”
As the crowd cheered, the former teacher continued: “And I told them, if you want to attack me for standing up for collective bargaining, for fair wages, for safe working conditions, for healthcare and retirement, you roll the damn dice, I’ll take my chances on that.”
Walz – the first labor union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan ran as a Republican in the 1980 election – told crowds at Laborfest that the Harris-Walz ticket will represent union workers’ interests best.
Earlier in the day, Walz and his wife Gwen also met with local labor leaders and officials.
The couple, who met while both teaching at a school in Nebraska in the nineties, were both members of the Education Minnesota union.
It was something off a Labor Day blitz for the Democratic presidential candidates.
While Walz was in Wisconsin, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff appeared in Michigan where she spoke to union workers in Detroit before travelling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to hold a joint campaign event with President Joe Biden.
By contrast, the Harris campaign accused Donald Trump of “dodging labor on Labor Day” after the Republican candidate’s campaign was limited to him calling into a single virtual event.
Walz previously hit out at Trump’s union record while speaking to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union in Los Angeles last month.
There, the vice presidential candidate slammed Trump’s record while touting Harris’s background as a former fast food worker, as he vowed that the Democrats would take the pro-labor agenda that made his state of Minnesota one of the best places to work and bring it to the rest of the country.
“You know vice president Harris grew up in a middle class family, picked up shifts at that McDonald’s as a student. I keep asking this to make a contrast here, can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s, trying to make a McFlurry or something?” he said.
Trump, he added, “couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything!”
Walz told the conference attendees that he and Harris both credit labor unions and unionized teachers, nurses, and state and local government workers with building the American middle class, and boasted of how he and the vice president have joined striking workers on picket lines.
Trump, however, has baselessly accused Harris of “lying” about working at McDonald’s in his latest personal attack on his rival.
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