By: Team Sherrod

The President of the United States asked millions of Americans to boycott an iconic American company because his feelings were hurt.

Last week, Donald Trump tweeted to his 85 million followers that they should stop buying products made by Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear because of what he viewed as a personal affront.

Goodyear employs 3,300 people in Akron. These are good-paying jobs – many of them union. These are people who take pride in their work, in taking care of their families, in helping to strengthen their communities.

In just one tweet, President Trump put their livelihoods at risk. This comes after spending years making his own Trump-branded products overseas.

How insulting – not only to Goodyear workers, their families, and the State of Ohio, but also to their suppliers and retailers all over the country.

Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

This is who Donald Trump is. He has made it clear: He doesn’t care about workers and he’s willing to risk American jobs to try to save his own.

He’s not even trying to cover up the fact that he will betray workers to save his own brand anymore. Just like he stopped pretending to care about essential, frontline workers once he learned that those most likely to get sick and die from COVID-19 were Black and brown workers.

In November, the American people are not going to fall for his divisiveness and phony populism. Trump said he would fight for workers in 2016 to convince Ohioans he was on their side, but now he has a four-year record of betraying those same workers and failing to address a pandemic:

He wasted trillions of our tax dollars on a handout to Wall Street and his wealthy friends.

He took overtime pay away from hundreds of thousands of Ohio workers.

He failed to get this pandemic under control and now, nearly 180,000 Americans have died on his watch and more than 1.5 million Ohioans have filed for unemployment since the pandemic started.

Goodyear is just his latest betrayal of workers in a long line of broken promises.

Just look at what happened in Lordstown – about 60 miles from the 2016 RNC site. In 2017, the President came to Lordstown and told workers, “don’t move, don’t sell your house,” because jobs were coming back to the Valley. Then, when GM pulled out of Lordstown, President Trump didn’t lift a finger to help, and gave GM a 50-percent off coupon to ship jobs overseas.

Trump also promised to renegotiate NAFTA, and yet his initial draft of the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement was another corporate trade deal. Senate Democrats along with Speaker Pelosi and the labor movement had to fix it because we always put workers first. Donald Trump always puts workers last and puts large, often foreign corporations first.

If failing American workers and threatening good, union jobs is the campaign message Trump wants Ohioans to hear while he’s still asking for their vote, just imagine what the next four years will look like.

Today, his target is Goodyear. But tomorrow, it could be Jeep or Chrysler in Toledo, Cooper Tire in Findlay, or Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati.

Americans need a president who will not only campaign, but also govern through the eyes of workers. Vice President Joe Biden, who has always delivered for working families and spearheaded the Recovery Act, is the clear choice.

VP Biden and Senator Kamala Harris know that we need to build back better — by fighting for and preserving the Dignity of Work for every American. Because when you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work.