Workers at a plant in Pennsylvania where Donald Trump spoke last week were reportedly told they would be paid less than their co-workers if they did not attend, and were instructed not to protest against the president.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that while attendance was optional, contract workers at the unfinished Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex who chose not to stand in the crowd would not qualify for time-and-a-half pay.
Enforcing a “no scan, no pay” policy, a memo from one of the contractors circulated to workers also banned yelling, protesting or “anything viewed as resistance” at Trump’s speech.
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CNN says the presidential visit was an official White House event “not a speech sponsored by the reelection campaign”, although The New York Times says “it was hard to distinguish it from a standard campaign rally”.
In what is likely to form the basis of his 2020 re-election campaign, the president complained about his perceived enemies in the media, the Democrats running for president and the Academy Awards, whilst talking up America’s booming economy.
He also told the audience that they should oust their union leaders if they declined to support him.
However, news that workers were effectively paid to attend and forbidden from voicing opposition will prove embarrassing for the White House - especially, The Independent says, as “Trump has a long history of falsely claiming that liberal demonstrators have been paid to protest”.
The president said mass demonstrations that followed his inauguration had been orchestrated by “professional protesters” who had been “incited by the media”, a similar line he used to dismiss protests against the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh and those opposing his anti-Muslim travel ban.
Trump took to his favourite medium, Twitter, on Sunday to vent media coverage of his repeated racism after a series of polls showed his approval ratings had fallen and that he was on track to lose the 2020 election.
A Fox News poll published last week put the president’s disapproval rating at 56%, just one point short of a record proportion and a five-point increase on last month.
In further ominous polling for the president, another Fox News survey found him to be less popular among voters than Democrat presidential candidates Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.
