Trump Fans Wearing ‘Auto Workers for Trump’ Shirts at Detroit Rally Admit They’re Not Actually Auto Workers

At least six of the people wearing “Auto Workers for Trump” shirts at a rally in Detroit featuring GOP vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) admitted they were not, in fact, auto workers.

Craig Mauger, state politics reporter for The Detroit News, attended the rally to cover the remarks by former President Donald Trump’s running mate and noted that there were “more than a dozen people wearing ‘auto workers for Trump’ shirts.” But when he spoke with them, they “acknowledged they were not auto workers.”

Initially, Mauger identified four who were wearing the shirts despite not actually being auto workers, and he later found two more.

Mauger included the misleading shirts anecdote in his writeup of the rally:

Vance, the running mate of former President Donald Trump and a U.S. senator from Ohio, spoke and took questions for about an hour in Detroit’s Eastern Market Shed 3. Several hundred people attended the event, including more than a dozen who were wearing “auto workers for Trump” shirts. However, six of the people in the shirts told The Detroit News on Tuesday they were not actually auto workers…

On Tuesday, Brian Pannebecker of Macomb County, who founded the group Auto Workers for Trump, said China controls the materials needed for EVs…

There were more than a dozen people in the crowd at Vance’s Detroit event wearing “auto workers for Trump” T-shirts. However, six of the individuals, including Carl Leonard of Chesterfield Township and Terry Flannery of Richmond, told The Detroit News they were not auto workers but supporters of Trump.

Leonard and Flannery said they had been given the shirts by Pannebecker, a retired Ford Motor Co. assembly line worker.

His reporting also noted that Vance had been asked “[o]n 3 different occasions over the last week” about if a second Trump administration “would honor electric vehicle investments planned for Michigan by the federal government.”

Vance “has not directly answered the question,” wrote Mauger. The junior senator from Ohio also used the term “table scraps” to describe $500 million allocated by the federal government for a General Motors plant in Lansing to convert to electric vehicle production.

Mauger reported that GM had pledged to invest $900 million to pair with the $500 million grant from the feds, and had said in its application for the grant that it would be able to retain 650 jobs and create 50 more at that Lansing plant.

Detroit is a Democratic stronghold. In 2020, Trump lost Detroit to Joe Biden 94% to 5%, contributing to his overall 3 point loss in Michigan (Biden bested him by 154,188 votes, 51% to 48%).

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