WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden gained the support of another union on Wednesday as the organization representing American construction workers lined up behind the Democratic incumbent and called Donald Trump a dangerous threat to the nation.
The head of the North American Building Union, who will host Biden at his legislative conference in Washington later Wednesday, said in an ad that the Republican presidential candidate “is not a good man” and that he focused solely on his return to the White House. to take revenge on people. »
“His dark side is very, very dark and very, very dangerous for this country,” said NABTU President Sean McGarvey, who said he knows Trump, a real estate developer who served in the White House from 2017 to 2021. for decades. “We cannot let the democracy we have worked for and cherish disintegrate with the wrong leader at the wrong time.”
McGarvey also cited what he called Trump’s failure to fix workers’ pensions and inaction on long-promised infrastructure repairs as other factors in the group’s support for his Democratic rival, who signed historic infrastructure legislation in 2021 and included billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. dollars in infrastructure spending.
Biden created “the greatest infrastructure boom this country has ever seen,” he told MSNBC in a separate interview, calling him “the most pro-union…pro-worker president this country has ever seen.” known…we see the results.” “.
Biden and Trump will face off again in the US presidential election on November 5 in what is expected to be a close and divisive fight.
Representatives for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest union announcing its support.
In January, Biden won the support of the United Auto Workers union. A number of other unions have not announced their choices in the November contest, including the Teamsters and the Fraternal Order of Police.
Asked about members who are strong Trump supporters, NABTU’s McGarvey acknowledged they might not be persuasive.
“What matters is the 15 percent of people who are persuadable, who are willing to hear the facts and form their own opinion,” he told MSNBC. “Many of our members are patriots and they don’t like the way this ex-president talks about what he will do if he is elected to another term.”
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Nandita Bose)
