UAW president doubles down on support for Biden after State of the Union shoutout

United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain doubled down on his support for President Biden following a shout-out from the president in his State of the Union speech.

“Joe Biden has a history of serving people, and standing with working-class people, and Donald Trump has a history of serving himself, and standing for the billionaire class,” Fain said in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” Saturday with hosts Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele.

In his State of the Union address, Biden referred to Fain as a “great friend and a great labor leader.” Fain, whose union endorsed Biden in January, attended the address as a guest of the White House. 

“[W]hen we make our endorsements… we don’t – we’re not telling our members who they’re gonna vote for,” Fain said in the MSNBC interview. “We’re taking facts, and taking the body of work and giving it – telling our members, ‘Look, we look at these things. This is a person that we believe is going to represent our interest the best, and represent working class interest the best.’”

Biden gave a fiery and energetic State of the Union address Thursday night. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who sat behind Biden during his speech, voiced his disapproval for the address.

“People are saying that I made funny facial expressions. I tried to keep a poker face, but it was very difficult. I disagreed so vehemently with so much of what he said, and I think the people back home did as well,” Johnson told reporters after the speech.

“There’s a lot of memes, I guess, going around tonight about my facial expressions. I did not like the speech, I don’t think the American people liked it, and there wasn’t much I could do about that. I guess I didn’t hide that very well,” Johnson told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

Biden also went after Trump multiple times during his speech, a few days after the former president’s last major rival in the GOP presidential primary race, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, dropped out.