ON STRIKE: President Biden came out in support yesterday for the striking United Auto Workers. “Let’s be clear, no one wants a strike. Say it again. No one wants a strike,” Biden said at the White House. “But I respect the workers right to use their options on in the collective bargaining system, and I understand the workers’ frustration.”

  Biden is pro-union, but a lengthy strike, or a strike throughout the entire industry, could damage the economy and Biden’s re-election prospects. Negotiators were expected to return to the table today.

  Just shy of 13,000 UAW employees walked out of three assembly plants owned by General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis (Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge) in a targeted strike that leaves the rest of the industry working.

  The UAW wants a 40 percent pay increase over the next four years to match the percentage increase of executives. The bosses say they could do half that, at most, while they pour money into converting to electric vehicles. 

  But the workers are pointing to the riches the companies are hauling in. In the first half of 2023, Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors reported profits of $11.6 billion, $3.7 billion and $5 billion, respectively. Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, told CNN, “We have profit sharing, so when the company does well, everyone does well.”

JUST SHUT UP: Federal prosecutors in the 2020 election interference conspiracy case have asked the judge to impose “a narrowly tailored” gag order on Donald Trump, citing his “near-daily” social media attacks on people involved in the case.

  Just for one example, Trump has repeatedly called Special Counsel jack Smith “deranged.” 

  Prosecutors say Trump could influence witnesses and poison the jury pool, which is surely one of the former president’s intents. The filing says, “Since the indictment in this case, the defendant has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors and prospective witnesses.”

ORANGE ALERT: In an interview earlier this week Donald Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker that he never ordered a Mar-a-Lago staffer to delete security video that’s now evidence in the federal indictment accusing him of mishandling and refusing to return classified documents. “That’s false,” Trump said.

  Pressed by Welker on whether he would testify to that under oath, Trump said, “Sure, I’m going to — I’ll testify.” 

 “But more importantly, the tapes weren’t deleted,” he added. “In other words, there was nothing done to them. And they were my tapes. I could have fought them. I didn’t even have to give them the tapes, I don’t think.”

  The indictment charges that two Trump staffers told a third staffer “the boss” had requested that the security video be deleted.

  Trump also told Welker that it is “very unlikely” he would pardon himself if he wins the 2024 election. “I think it’s very unlikely. What, what did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said. “You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail?”

  Trump is charged in one federal indictment with conspiring to illegally overturn the 2020 election that he lost, and in another indictment with mishandling and refusing to return classified documents to the government.

  The former president was also pressed about his problems by conservative podcast host Megan Kelly. “There is a realistic chance of you going to prison. Can you see that happening?” Kelly said.

  She asked, “Do you believe that every CIA document that came to you as president is yours to keep no matter what.?” Trump said, “I’m not going to answer that question.” 

REVELATIONS: The announcement of retirement by Utah Sen. Mitt Romney came within days of the release of a new biography, “Romney: A Reckoning,” in which he spills the truth. A few items:

– Many of his colleagues, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Republican leader, share his dim view of Donald Trump. “Almost without exception,” Romney says in the book, “they shared my view of the president.”

– He recalls that during the January 6^th insurrection he blamed Missouri Republican Josh Hawley, shouting “You’re the reason this is happening!” 

– He texted the following to McConnell in advance of the insurrection: “There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator — the President — is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.” McConnell never responded. 

THE OBIT PAGE:  Fernando Botero, the Colombian artist who in paintings and sculpture portrayed characters from generals to bishops, prostitutes, housewives and more as rotund and corpulent caricatures, making him one of the world’s best-known artists, died yesterday in Monaco at 91.

  “A perfect woman in art can prove banal in reality, like a photograph in Playboy,” Botero once said. “The most beautiful women in art, like Mona Lisa herself, were ugly in real life. There are those who see the monstrous in my work, but my work is what it is.”

THE SPIN RACK: The number of dead in the Maui wildfire has dropped to 97 after a DNA check. Officials had been saying 115. — A federal jury has found that Kim Davis, the former clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, must pay $100,000 to a same-sex couple she denied a marriage license because of her religious beliefs. —Hurricane Lee is weakening but still expected to bring high winds and heavy rain to the US/Canada border, potentially bringing flooding to already saturated New England.

BELOW THE FOLD:  More than 19,000 people have signed a petition to rename the Key West International Airport after the late singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. The petition says, “Jimmy Buffett moved us all and made us want to slide on our flip-flops and head to Key West to Margaritaville.” 

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