Dear Commons Community,

The documentary film maker, Michael Moore commented on how  he believes President Donald Trump got “played” by General Motors, which this week announced it was cutting up to 14,000 jobs in North America.  On yesterday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes,” Moore said the automaker was “doing what it’s always done” — which he claimed was going back on earlier promises to create jobs in exchange for tax breaks and abatements.  As reported by The Huffington Post:

“That’s the thing about Trump. He doesn’t understand how he’s been played by GM,” said Moore, whose 1989 film “Roger & Me” centered on GM’s axing of roles in Flint, Michigan.

Moore said Trump’s indignation at the job losses “sounds right” but that the president “should know better.” He then expounded on Trump’s complicated relationship with big business.

“I’ve wondered in these two years why corporate America and Wall Street have been kind of quiet about Trump, because he has never been one of them,” Moore said. “To corporate America, to Wall Street, Trump’s been the trailer trash of the millionaire class. They never let him into their club, their exclusive high-end club.”

“You’re such a fool, Trump. You’ve been played again by these people who’ve never liked you,” he added.”

I was living just east of Tarrytown when General Motors displaced 2,000 workers and closed its plant there in 1996.  This was after the town had given General Motors substantial tax breaks year after year.  Moore’s comments ring true.

Tony

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.