INDIANAPOLIS —
They arrived by the busload, four coaches in all, from around the state. Laborers, thousands of them, flooded the south side of the Indiana Statehouse, covering the green lawn with their blue and yellow United Steelworkers signs and t-shirts.
Mingled among them were Donald Trump’s new favorite campaign props, flesh and blood talking points.
They were workers from Carrier Corp., a United Technologies company, whose factory here announced one bleak day back in February that by 2017 it would outsource 1,400 jobs to a manufacturing plant in Monterrey, Mexico, leaving only 200 non-union research and development jobs behind.
The video went viral, racking up more than 3.7 million views on YouTube—a readymade Make America Great Again speech anecdote for Trump. As the billionaire arena-storms Indiana, Trump routinely calls the Carrier workers out in rallies, and has talked up their plight since February.
At a Trump event in the Farmer’s Coliseum at the Indiana State Fairgrounds earlier in the week, for example, Trump engaged in a call-and-response with a handful of them.
“We love Carrier,” Trump said. “Do you love Trump?” The audience cheered.
“How long have you worked for Carrier?” he asked someone in the sea of supporters.
“10 years,” a man, somewhere, shouted.
“10 years,” Trump said, before moving on to another member of the audience. “How about you?”
“17 years,” the man yelled.
“17 years,” Trump said. “Alright. Stick with me fellas. Don’t worry. … These Carrier guys are following me around!”
Someone else called out to Trump.
“How many years?” Trump asked again.
“18 years,” Trump said. “These are great people. These are great people. But someone had their cellphone camera on while this guy is viciously letting go of one-thousand four-hundred [people]. I’ve been talking about it for months, because I got to see it on television.”
Back at the Statehouse, days after the Trump event, hundreds of Carrier workers descended on the city’s downtown around noon for a March and Rally for Good Jobs in Indianapolis, and they were clamoring for their candidate, the man of the hour.
But their candidate wasn’t Trump. It was Bernie Sanders, whom their union had endorsed days earlier. They wore “Labor for Bernie” buttons.
“In all reality, I see Trump as an opportunist,” said Robert James, 57, a forklift driver at Carrier.