A new ad from the Trump campaign touts President Trump’s claimed superior job creation record, but the ad features a Minnesota steel plant that laid off hundreds of workers, the Washington Post reports.
The ad, titled “Lawless,” is airing in Minnesota, where Trump wants to hammer home the message that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden supporter the rioters that took to the streets immediately after the death, at the hands of police, of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
One section of the ad has the narrative “jobs not mobs,” showing a Gerdau Ameristeel plant in St. Paul. Vice President Pence made an appearance at that mill in March 2019 to boast about Trump’s trade negotiations. (The US, incidentally, has seen record growth in its trade deficit.)
“Gerdau is an example of how American steel is back,” Pence said during the appearance. “We are going to level the playing field, and Americans are going to win like never before.”
However, two months after the USMCA was signed in January 2020, the mill laid off 222 of the site’s 300 workers.
“The tag line is jobs,” Dave Hallas, a 41-year-old union worker at Gerdau Ameristeel, who has worked at the mill for 18 years, said “My mill that has been operating for over 55 years is now closed and it was not covid related. Failed promises.”