The White House says the president was justified in flipping off and f-bombing a worker who shouted “pedophile protector” at Trump while he was touring a Ford factory in Dearborn, Mich., on Tuesday.
The heckler, TJ Sabula, 40, a member of United Auto Workers Local 600, said he isn’t sorry.
Western Kentucky UAW retiree Jerry Sykes staunchly defended his union brother. “Donald Trump showed he is an ass that has no class,” said Sykes, 82, who retired to Marshall County after working at Chrysler plants in Detroit. “He has no respect for people.”
The story is receiving wide coverage in the U.S. and foreign media. “A cellphone video captured Trump, who was visiting the Ford F-150 plant in Dearborn, twice mouthing ‘f--- you’ as he pointed to someone calling up to him from the factory floor below,” wrote Natalie Allison and Dan Merica in The Washington Post. “The president subsequently raised his middle finger toward the heckler as he continued walking. He then waved.
“Out of frame in the video, a person can be heard yelling ‘pedophile protector’ just before Trump mouthed the insult — an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s handling of the investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”
Sykes belonged to Chrysler UAW Locals 140 and 889. Still a progressive activist, he is a member of Four Rivers Indivisible, a local branch of the national Indivisible organization and has participated in numerous protests, most recently a Paducah rally against lCE violence, including the shooting death of a Minneapolis woman.
“What Trump did in Detroit shows exactly what we have been trying to tell people all along — that he wants to be a king,” Sykes said. “You do not say anything against the king because he is going to retaliate by whatever means necessary. Trump wants you to bow down to him and do everything he wants you to do. If you speak one word he doesn’t like, he’s going to come down on you.”
The Post story said Ford Sabula suspended him “from work pending an investigation.” Following his suspension, supporters of Sabula started two Go Fund Me campaigns that raised nearly $811,000, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Sabula’s union is rallying behind him. “The autoworker at the Dearborn Truck Plant is a proud member of a strong and fighting union — the UAW,” said a Wednesday statement from Vice President Laura Dickerson, Ford department director. “He believes in freedom of speech, a principle we wholeheartedly embrace, and we stand with our membership in protecting their voice on the job.”
She added, “The UAW will ensure that our member receives the full protection of all negotiated contract language safeguarding his job and his rights as a union member. Workers should never be subjected to vulgar language or behavior by anyone – including the President of the United States.”
After denouncing Sabula’s suspension, Sykes asked, “Where’s the freedom of speech? You have the right to say what you want to say in this country.”
“As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,” the paper quoted Sabula, who added that he was worried about his future at Ford “and believes he has been ‘targeted for political retribution’ for ‘embarrassing Trump in front of his friends.’”
Sabula said he was an independent who had voted for Republicans, but not Trump, according to The Post.
The paper said other plant workers cheered Trump and took selfies with him. “I’m sure management had clamped down on everybody and told them to mind their manners,” Sykes said, adding that management, too, might have steered the president to workers “they knew would keep quiet.”
Sykes lambasted Ford executives for “acting like the president is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that everything is peachy keen in the country. It makes me sick when they act like that when they know doggone well that it’s not.”
Sykes said he got a text message from a former president of UAW Local 685 in Kokomo, Ind., that expressed his sentiment: “He said we should have walked that plant out after that worker was suspended.”
Meanwhile, Sykes expects more outbursts from Trump as his poll numbers keep tumbling and as a growing number of citizens take to the streets to protest his actions. “Every day we are putting more and more pressure on where it should be put. The people are responding around the country, and I think that the boiling point is yet to come.”
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