WORD-WITH-LA-01
Felix Salmon, Lesley Stahl, Sarah Slamen >
president of the United Steelworkers Local that represents Carrier workers
said that Donald Trump lied about the number of jobs saved. United
Steelworkers president reacts to Trump`s attack on Carrier union leader.
Kellyanne Conway says Trump can affect stock markets just by Tweeting.
Donald Trump says he is negotiating prices with Boeing Company. >
Paul Ryan; Abortion; Governor John Kasich; Labor; Donald Trump; Carrier;
Chuck Jones; Leo Gerard; Unions; Employment & Unemployment >
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: And that does it for us tonight, we will see you again tomorrow, now it`s time for THE LAST WORD with Lawrence O`Donnell, good evening, Lawrence.
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL,MSNBC HOST: Oh, Rachel, sorry, I was on here trying to buy a share of Exxon on e-trade.
(LAUGHTER)
MADDOW: Yes --
O`DONNELL: But I don`t have e-trade on here, and I don`t know how to buy a share of Exxon, so --
MADDOW: Well, yes -- well, if the Secretary of State still got them when he gets sworn in, well, I can`t tell you what`s going to happen to those shares.
O`DONNELL: Only in Trump world.
MADDOW: Thank you, Lawrence --
O`DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel. So, Donald Trump, the champion of American workers is now tonight attacking American workers.
He is blaming the workers at the Carrier plant in Indiana for Carrier`s decision to move their jobs to Mexico.
And tonight Donald Trump attacked those workers union leader Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones will be our first guest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: The person of the year is a tremendous honor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the decision is not made as an honor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The person of the year is the one who has had the most influence over events of the year for better or worse.
TRUMP: Divided States of America., I didn`t divide them, they`re divided now.
JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I`m counting on President- elect Trump to tamp down on this bitterness.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can we agree President-elect Trump, that at this stage it would be better for you to simply stop watching "SNL"?
TRUMP: I like Alec, but his imitation of me is really mean-spirit and it`s not very good.
REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: He is a very forgiving, very magnanimous kind of a guy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is he a bona fide Republican?
RYAN: Yes, we`re just different people --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is he a --
RYAN: Oh --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Republican if he`s got to --
RYAN: Yes --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vote? --
KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP SENIOR ADVISER: You see that through tweets now he can affect industry. He affected the stock market yesterday frankly, and he did it twice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he is tweeting about Boeing, when he is tweeting about good companies, he is actually trying to say who is in charge right now.
TRUMP: I think I am very restrained.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are looking and acting as if you are mean and petty, thin-skinned and vindictive. Stop this!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Donald Trump, who last week presented himself as the hero of the workers at a Carrier plant in Indiana is now attacking those very same workers and blaming them for Carrier moving their jobs to Mexico.
Donald Trump has congratulated himself repeatedly for saving over a thousand jobs at Carrier from moving to Mexico.
He praised Carrier for not moving those jobs to Mexico, even though Carrier told Donald Trump they still intend to move 1,300 jobs at least to Mexico.
So, in that Trump deal, more jobs would be sent to Mexico than kept in Indiana.
Yesterday, Chuck Jones, the president of the United Steelworkers Local that represents the Carrier workers said that Donald Trump "lied his ass off about the number of jobs saved."
Here is Donald Trump lying his ass off.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: United Technologies and Carrier stepped it up. And now they`re keeping -- actually the number is over 1,100 people, which is so great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Chuck Jones says that Carrier has informed them that the actual number of jobs that will remain is 730 jobs.
Chuck Jones made that point on "Cnn" earlier tonight, and minutes after he said it, Donald Trump tweeted this: "Chuck Jones, who is president of the United Steelworkers 1999 has done a terrible job representing workers.
No wonder companies flee country." Joining us now is Chuck Jones; president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999 Union.
Chuck Jones, what`s your reaction to Donald Trump`s tweet about your comments tonight?
CHUCK JONES, PRESIDENT, UNITED STEELWORKERS LOCAL 1999 UNION: Well, you know, coming from a man that has fought real hard and steals(ph) millions of dollars to try to keep people from organizing unions in his hotels and casinos.
I guess I would take it as a -- you know, thank you or you know, indicated as we must be doing a pretty good job representing our people to provide them with good wages and good benefits.
So, you know, short of that, you know, I don`t put a lot of credence to what he said. The only thing I was trying to do was correct him on some of the statements he made.
And what he said was saving 1,100 jobs, that was a falsehood. And a lot of our people when President-elect Trump said that earlier in the week and before we knew what the exact numbers was last week had got their hopes up that they were going to keep a job.
When in all reality, and we found out last Thursday from -- at noon that there was going to be 730 avenue jobs to remain.
Another 70 supervisory clerical-type works remain. But he was wanting to count in the 350 research and development jobs that the company when they made the announcement in February were staying here in the city anyway.
So, our people got false hopes because they wouldn`t -- the company wouldn`t come out with the numbers of who was staying and who was going. So, a lot of our people that thought they had lost their job thought they were going to have a job.
In all reality said -- you know, like I said, 730 staying, and here in Indianapolis 550 are losing their livelihood.
O`DONNELL: Another tweet he tweeted a little bit later tonight was directed towards you.
He said "if United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.
Spend more time working, less time talking, reduce dues." Now, there he is in that tweet, very clearly blaming you, blaming the workers, the unionized workers for Carrier sending these jobs to Mexico.
Now when he was campaigning for president, he blamed Carrier completely. He never said that he blamed the union, he never said that he blamed the workers.
If he had said in Indiana that he blamed the workers at Carrier for those jobs being sent to Mexico, would he have gotten support and votes from workers at Carrier and members of your union?
JONES: Man, I`m going to assume that some of them would have thought twice before they would have voted for Mr. Trump.
And probably would have voted for him. The whole thing is ridiculous where he takes exception to being corrected.
And on my numbers, I`m correct and he is wrong. On the promises that he made to -- oh, well, always on the campaign circuit to American people about Carrier, he is saying that he didn`t say it.
So, he is wrong on that. He stood up here last Thursday and told falsehoods, and that`s what I was calling him out on.
Now I appreciate him very much for getting involved and saving 800 jobs that`s going to remain here, countless the salary people, without his input that probably wouldn`t have got done.
So, I appreciate it, and I made it perfectly clear on every interview I`ve done that I appreciate that.
Now he wants to turn around and he wants to slam me. So, you know, I`m not bothered by it by no means.
And I`m not backing up on my position when I know that he is wrong, I`m right and we`ll move on.
And you know, if he wants to keep on tweeting, I`ll keep on responding.
O`DONNELL: Well, you know, and then he`s not just blaming you. He is blaming the workers and all --
JONES: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Unionized workers there. He is saying if those workers, if the United Steelworkers were any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.
Now the way you would have kept those jobs in Indiana would be to cut the wages. Wouldn`t --
JONES: Yes --
O`DONNELL: When Donald Trump was trying to keep those jobs in Indiana, did he ever call up the Steelworkers Union and say please cut your wages.
Please give back money to the company. Stop taking such high wages from this company so that your jobs can stay there.
Or did he just negotiate with the company and didn`t negotiate with the workers at all?
JONES: He just negotiated with the company. And in fact, what we did when we sit down with the company, when the announcement was made to try to save these jobs, $23 million a year in concessions was offered up to the company.
That was -- they cost everything, said $23 million. They said you can`t come close to the $65 million they were saving.
So, it was a nice effort, but you can`t do it. Now in order to achieve the $65 million, all your people would have to work for $5 an hour, which is below minimum wage, so, that`s against the law and they`d have no benefits.
They`d have no insurance, no healthcare for vacations, no nothing. So, we`re moving to Monterrey, Mexico.
So, it wasn`t the fact that we didn`t spend a lot of time and effort to see what we could do to save this place.
And you know, I don`t know if he realizes or I really don`t care if he does or not, but that`s the truth of the matter.
O`DONNELL: So, there is Donald Trump tonight blaming the workers because you wouldn`t take $5 an hour, which you couldn`t. Even if somebody decided they wanted to since it would be against the law --
JONES: Yes --
O`DONNELL: Below the minimum wage. What -- now, there have been some news reports tonight that since you went public on this, you have received threats from Trump --
JONES: Oh, yes --
O`DONNELL: Supporters. What can you tell us about that?
JONES: Nothing, it says they`re going to kill me. But you know, you better keep an eye on your kids.
We know what type of car you drive, you know, things along those lines. But I`ve been doing this job for 30 years.
And you know, I`ve not heard a little bit of everything from people wanting to burn my house down or shoot me and everything else.
So, you know, they can with a grain of salt, you know, I don`t put a lot of faith in that.
And you know, I`m not concerned about it and I`m not getting anybody involved -- authorities, nothing I can deal with people that, you know, make stupid statements and I`ll move on.
O`DONNELL: I just want to go back to that moment when Donald Trump is out there at the plant in Indiana at Carrier.
And we think of all the things that he said, we all -- we all watched what he had to say out there.
And I`m just wondering, if in somewhere in the middle of everything he had to say, he had said if the United Steelworkers was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.
If he had said that, would he have gotten applause from that audience he was speaking to?
JONES: Man, I don`t think as much. You know, and, you know, to go back to his statements.
When he was giving those statements, the people sitting in that room did not know.
Because we had just heard some hours before from the company what the breakdown of who was keeping their jobs.
And he got up there and said numerous times that we have kept over 1,100 jobs here at Carrier.
Well, you know, I would think the average person in the room that didn`t know the breakdown thought that they were talking about manufacturing jobs.
They were talking about their jobs. And you know -- and they didn`t mention -- well, we are moving 550 jobs to Monterrey, Mexico.
Now also here in Indiana, we`re losing -- and it`s not one of our units IDW, 700 UTC jobs up hundreds in Indiana.
Now the taxpayers of Indiana anted up $7 million over ten years. Now, I`m not the best maybe math major by no means.
But the company was saving $65 million a year by moving all the jobs except our R&D people to Monterrey, Mexico.
They have got $5 billion with a B in military contracts. Nobody is going to maybe admit to it.
If I were Mr. Trump, I would have felt like I had some pretty good leverage on UTC.
But they portrayed it that a lot of the company had talked to the company and they reconsidered in the state of Indiana, offered up $7 million over ten years.
That`s a drop in the bucket. But it`s still taxpayers money here in the state of Indiana that went to a very profitable company. And we`re hearing a lot of feedback on that.
O`DONNELL: Chuck Jones, thank you very much for joining us tonight, I really appreciate it.
JONES: Lawrence, thank you very much for having me.
O`DONNELL: Thank you. We`re joined now by David Corn; Washington Bureau Chief for "Mother Jones" and an Msnbc political analyst.
And Ana Marie Cox; senior political correspondent for "MTV News".
And Ana Marie, it`s just these tweets tonight, I`m just imagining Donald Trump saying these very same things when he was in the factory with those workers at Carrier.
It`s all your fault, workers, that`s why these jobs are being moved to Mexico.
ANA MARIE COX, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, MTV NEWS: Well, you know, I am really stuck on something that Chuck said about what he did say in that room, which is that he lied to the workers faces.
He did more than insult to them. He said he gave them the impression that their jobs are being saved, and they weren`t.
You know, there are people who will -- who thought in that moment, applauded for Trump in that moment because they thought he had saved their jobs, and he didn`t.
And that is, you know, a monstrous lie. I -- you know -- this comes a little bit too late, right?
I mean, there are those of us who knew he was a liar before this. I feel - - I wonder about what those workers feel today.
I wonder if they`re the first round of people that we`re going to see regretting their votes for Trump.
I do think that you know, this is something that I know we`ve talked about, which is that, that you know, middle class and lower middle class white voters that voted for Trump, they are going to be some of the people hurt the most by his policies.
I mean, there are a lot of vulnerable groups that are going to be hurt, but these people -- these are some of the people that are going to be hurt the most when he finally gets in office.
He managed to hurt them before he got into office, too, lied about that.
O`DONNELL: David Corn, Donald Trump ran as we`d never seen a Republican run before as the champion of the working American.
And he is going to save the jobs, and against all the trade policies that Republicans have been in favor of.
And it only took -- it only took a fact correction by Chuck Jones. It only took one fact correction by a union leader for Donald Trump to become pure Republican. And now jobs moving to Mexico are entirely the fault of the workers themselves.
DAVID CORN, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, MOTHER JONES: Can you imagine what would have happened tonight if Alec Baldwin had tweeted out that Donald Trump had lied about the Carrier deal?
I mean, I don`t know if we could go on after that. I don`t know if Donald Trump could go on after that. I loved it when Chuck Jones said, you know, if he keeps on tweeting, I`ll keep on responding.
Now that`s the modern day union spirit. You know, fight, organize. But here you have a guy, Donald Trump, who lives literally in a gold-plated apartment now blaming the people that he claimed to be a champion of while pushing through corporate socialism which Republicans always said they were against.
You know, Carrier is getting $7 million in these tax credits from Indiana while it`s already saving $65 million or it will be less now on moving these jobs overseas.
And it`s been used, a lot of those money, those savings to automate its factories here in the United States.
And I`m betting ten years down the road when it`s still getting those tax credits, those jobs, even if they stay here will no longer exist.
So, this is really not about helping workers in the long run. It`s not about having a coherent economic policy that will help anyone else other than these workers.
And on top of it, Donald Trump is lying. It`s like a trifecta of Trumpianism.
O`DONNELL: We`re joined now by phone by Leo Gerard; he is the International President of the United Steelworkers Union.
He is also the Vice President of the AFL-CIO. And Leo Gerard, I`m just going to read for you these two Donald Trump tweets.
Because I know you`ve been traveling and you`ve just grabbed the phone for us as soon as you could.
He tweeted tonight after Chuck Jones made some public comments about the correct number of jobs that were being kept at Carrier.
He said "Chuck Jones who is president of the United Steelworkers 1999 has done a terrible job representing workers.
No wonder companies flee the country." And then his second tweet was "if United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.
Spend more time working, less time talking, reduce dues." So, Leo Gerard, there he is saying, look at what these workers are doing, no wonder companies flee the country.
That`s a complete blaming of the worker for this situation.
LEO GERARD, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT, UNITED STEELWORKERS UNION & VICE PRESIDENT, AFL-CIO: Well, thanks, Lawrence, for getting me a chance to at least be on the phone.
I guess my first response is really one of sadness. Now I`ll say more, but we`ve got someone who is just about to become the President of the United States, most important job on the planet.
And he is busy tweeting about a local union president who is in fact a hero. Chuck Jones is someone who was standing up, fighting for his members, refused to accept that Carrier was going to just get to walk away.
He and his membership and our district director made this a national issue. Every time a politician wanted to talk about the economy, Chuck Jones and his local talked about what about Carrier moving to Mexico for $6 an hour.
And telling us to our face in a warehouse, nothing personal, we`re going because we can make more money.
And Chuck and his people stood up to that. And now we have because we have a local president who clarified the facts.
The president of the United States decided that he should call them names. I am -- I am terribly disappointed, I am also angry.
Look, the fact of the matter is that our union offered Carrier, what would it take to keep you here?
And they said there`s nothing you can do that would keep us here unless you want to work for under $5 an hour.
But Chuck wouldn`t accept that, and his members wouldn`t accept that, and they kept making an issue of it.
And I want to say that we wrote a letter to the president-elect not long after the election, telling him that we are prepared to work with him to repeal and replace NAFTA.
To repeal and replace PNTR, to negotiate a fair trade standard, to help them with infrastructure, to help them grow jobs and raise wages.
We haven`t had a response to that letter yet. So, I am -- I am really one of the people that think Chuck Jones is a hero.
He stood up for his members, and for the president-elect to get so upset because Chuck was simply terrifying.
And let me say this, I know from my dialogue with our membership and with Chuck`s local in particular that when people heard the 1,100 jobs were going to be saved, they were enthusiastic that, that could be their job.
Only to find out later that the fact wasn`t the 1,100 jobs, it was 730. So, they went on a high thinking they have a future.
Then they got slammed back down. And it was in Chuck`s class, a man with tremendous class to his membership, he said hang on, I`m going to clarify it.
And he went to get additional information and he found out there was only 730 jobs.
So, I think Chuck Jones is a hero and one who has fought for his members very well.
O`DONNELL: It seems that Donald Trump has a lot to learn about the way unions work, especially in this second tweet.
And it`s always -- it`s always interesting to take apart Donald Trump`s words because frequently they have no meaning or they`re completely confused or filled with ignorance.
And in this tweet where he says if the union was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana, clearly blaming the union and the workers.
And then he tells the workers and the union to do this. He said spend more time working.
He wants people to spend more time working at that plant. Apparently, he thinks they`re not working, not working enough.
And then he says reduce dues. Now explain to Donald Trump what dues, union dues have to do with whether Carrier keeps jobs in Indiana.
GERARD: They have nothing to do with whether Carrier keeps jobs in Indiana. In fact, our union dues are a little over not quite 1.5 percent.
And so they`re minimal in fact to Carrier`s operation and to the work we do. And then again, I want to go back to what Carrier said at the time when they made the initial announcement.
They said that it had nothing to do with the quality of their work. And that this was a high quality, efficient, well-run facility.
What it had to do with is they were going to Mexico because they could do it for $6 an hour.
There is no worker in America who could work for $6 an hour. It`s in fact lower than the minimum wage even if you didn`t do it in pesos, but you did it in dollars.
So that to make that comment is really an insult to the workers who are making a quality product.
One of the things that amazed me for a long time about this was that the president-elect and others on the Republican Party were talking about Carrier Air Conditioners.
In that factory, they don`t make air conditioners. They make furnaces, and Mexicans don`t need furnaces.
What those furnaces were going to do, they were going to be made in Mexico and shipped back to America.
And so the president hopefully will stand by his word and say that any company who is going to export work to another country and then try to import them back to this country after firing workers is going to get nailed with a 35 percent tariff.
I support the president doing that, so will our union.
O`DONNELL: Well, he seems to have changed his theory about what`s going on with these jobs.
Now that he is blaming the worker for the jobs being sent to Mexico and blaming the union for the jobs being moved to Mexico.
Why wouldn`t we expect in the future when there is an announcement of jobs being moved to Mexico, why wouldn`t we then expect Donald Trump to then negotiate with the workers and try to get the workers to cut their pay down to whatever it has to be cut to in order to --
GERARD: Lawrence --
O`DONNELL: Compete with the Mexican worker?
GERARD: Let me tell you. The majority of places that our jobs are being exported to, and we`ve been fighting -- the Steelworkers Union has been fighting this business of outsourcing jobs to other developing countries for more than 35 years.
We`ve been on this because we knew what the agenda was, and we knew where it would take us.
We`ve lost more than six million jobs. Here is the thing. We could not work low enough in wages and benefits to maintain the jobs against Mexican workers, against Chinese workers, against Bangladeshi workers, against Vietnamese workers.
And the fact of the matter is that if we`re doing that, we would be betraying our membership.
So, that we need to sit down and have a fair trade policy. And we`ve said we`re prepared to work with this president to get -- to repeal NAFTA, repeal PNTR, repeal the deal with South Korea and negotiate a fair trade deal.
We`re ready to work with them.
O`DONNELL: Leo Gerard -- Leo Gerard, thank you very much for joining us tonight, I really appreciate you joining us on this breaking news.
GERARD: Thank you very much.
O`DONNELL: Thank you. David Corn, Ana Marie Cox back with us. And David, I`m really struck by this turn by Donald Trump.
Because this is back to the classic Republican position of the loss of these jobs is the fault of the worker, the fault of the union for demanding too high a wage.
And you need to both break the union and reduce wages in order to hold on to these kinds of jobs.
And that just puts Donald Trump squarely where the rest of the Republican Party has been on this for a very long time.
CORN: Well, I`m not surprised by anything Donald Trump does anymore. I don`t think there`s a core set of principles. I don`t think there`s even a paragraph of principles or policy guidance that he adheres to.
It`s whatever works for the moment. And we do know though the one way to get his attention is to criticize him and he was lashing out.
Union guy criticizes him, so, he, you know, automatically goes to the Republican anti-union playbook to strike back. I mean, it`s childish, it`s certainly not presidential and it`s actually quite dangerous.
So, any time a company or a union leader or a citizen or maybe Ana Marie Cox does something that Trump doesn`t like, he`ll be tweeting and trying to, you know, affect your life in a negative way.
He can get stuck. I mean, Kellyanne Conway was bragging that he got the stock for Boeing to go down after Boeing criticized his trade policy.
I mean, this is a step towards authoritarianism. I don`t like to be hyperbolic or you know, mongering any fear. But this is really not the way the president of all America as he claims to be should behave.
O`DONNELL: Tonight, Donald Trump tweeting "no wonder the companies flee the country because of what workers demand to be paid." He said if the union had done its job, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.
And Ana, it just makes me wonder, the next time this comes up and Donald Trump tries to make a phone call to a company that`s thinking about moving jobs to Mexico, that company just says back to Donald Trump.
Here is the phone number for the union representing our workers, call them, get them to cut their labor -- cut their labor costs, cut their wages, and then we might be able to keep those jobs.
There is no reason for the company not to use Donald Trump`s labor logic and labor cost logic against Donald Trump`s argument.
COX: No, I mean, because Trump himself has used that logic for his own businesses, right?
O`DONNELL: Yes --
COX: I mean, Trump`s own businesses are no friend to labor. I mean, you want to know what Trump really believes, you want to know what his core set of principles are?
Look at the way he runs his businesses. He did not like using union labor himself.
So, why would he ever think that other businesses should use it too? And here`s also -- you`re very right.
He doesn`t seem to understand the point of a union. The point of the union is not just to keep jobs, right?
It`s not jobs over anything else. It is to have jobs that are worth keeping. It is to have jobs that pay a decent wage, that come with the kind of benefits that, you know, we have in the modern era.