Trump Fumes Over Firefighters’ Union Endorsement of Biden

Test Ticker

Support Mother Jones with a year-end donation

Here are the facts: 1) We urgently need to raise $350,000 in online donations this month; 2) Readers told us fundraising is annoying; 3) Both journalism and US democracy are in trouble. So, to make this as un-annoying as possible, we’re hoping less is more right now—and we focus on three simple questions: Why us, why now, and why does your support for our journalism matter? We need a lot of help this month and can’t afford to come up short again. Please make a year-end gift if you can right now.

We need to raise $350,000 in online donations this month to keep Mother Jones charging hard. But readers told us fundraising is annoying, and we don’t want to add to the overwhelming noise. So we’re hoping less is more right now, and that we can “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” in making the case for the year-end gifts we need. Please help if you can right now.

Douglas Christian/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump’s simmering resentment after the country’s largest firefighters’ union backed Joe Biden’s presidential bid was on full display Wednesday morning, with the president furiously retweeting dozens of posts claiming to be authored by firefighters at odds with the International Association of Fire Fighters’ endorsement this week.

Trump kicked off the marathon of retweets by first complaining that the “dues sucking” IAFF was indebted to him.

The president’s frenzied social media activity came two days after the IAFF declared that Biden was the “strongest candidate” and had a “worker-focused platform.” Hours after the group’s announcement on Monday, Biden spoke at a Teamster union hall in Pittsburgh for his first speech as a 2020 candidate, telling the crowd that he chose the city for its “hardworking, middle-class Americans.” As Mother Jones reported from the scene, IAFF President Harold Schaitberger was among the speakers to introduce Biden at the event.

“He speaks to and connects with those workers who didn’t believe the last Democratic nominee heard about them, cared about them, and felt that their historic votes for the Democratic candidate were maybe just being taken for granted,” Schaitberger told the crowd.

Much to his critics’ delight, Trump’s ongoing anger over the IAFF’s endorsement appears to have had a blinding effect. His Wednesday morning retweeting spree swept up an account called “Fuck Donald Trump.”