Jane Coaston, host of The New York Time podcast “The Argument,” said Wednesday that Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) recent support of efforts by Amazon workers to unionize says less about his actual support for their demands, and more about him engaging in a “culture war” with the tech giant.
During an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Coaston responded to Rubio’s USA Today op-ed published earlier this month in which he accused Amazon of pushing back against “working-class values,” crushing small businesses, banning conservative books and bowing to “China’s censorship demands.”
Coaston noted that Rubio, along with other conservatives, have historically opposed the influence of labor unions.
“This is not about support for unions,” the podcast host explained. “This is about the fact that the companies that Republicans and conservatives had long felt were their biggest beneficiaries… that they don’t feel they have the same quid pro quo with them, they don’t feel as if they have the same relationship they used to have with Apple or Amazon or big companies at large.”
“I think this represents an effort at hostage-taking,” Coaston continued. “Let’s say Amazon were a very conservative-leaning company, there’s no way Marco Rubio is saying this, there’s no way this op-ed happens.”
Coaston argued that Rubio’s pushback against Amazon can more accurately be described as “a culture war issue that happens to involve unions.”
Watch part of Coaston’s interview above.
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