Chuck Schumer speaks the truth on labor secretary nominee and fast food CEO Andy Puzder, though at this point Donald Trump’s amazing gall and hypocrisy have been exposed so thoroughly that no one can really claim to be surprised:
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) on Thursday called Puzder “probably the most anti-worker nominee to the Department of Labor ever.”
“Donald Trump campaigned on behalf of the working men and women,” Schumer said. “He said he was going to represent them. The nomination of Mr. Puzder represents broken promise after broken promise. Donald Trump has amazing gall, to have campaigned the way he did, and then put this man as nominee for secretary of Labor.
“They ought to withdraw the nomination of Puzder before he further embarrasses this administration and further exposes the hypocrisy of President Trump, saying one thing to the workers of America, and then doing another,” he added.
To recap: Puzder’s chains, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., specialize in wage theft—making workers work off the clock, denying them overtime pay, making them pay for uniforms that push them below minimum wage—and also face sexual harassment complaints. Puzder’s company sent jobs overseas. Puzder once personally contributed $10,000 to block a $1 minimum wage increase. He loves to run ads featuring bikini-clad women eating hamburgers, because hot babes in bikinis amirite? He employed an undocumented housekeeper, fired her when he found out she was undocumented, but only paid taxes on her employment after he was nominated for labor secretary. As Noam Scheiber points out, “If he thought she was legal, why didn't he pay taxes all along?”
Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, joined Schumer in hitting hard on Puzder’s nomination:
“It is shocking that a nominee for this critical position would flout those rules so openly, overlooking the same responsibilities that business owners nationwide manage to uphold,” she said, adding that Puzder’s “decision to pick and choose what laws he himself follows is disqualifying.”
Puzder’s spokesman dismissed Schumer and Murray’s concerns as “fake news,” in keeping with the official Trump regime definition of fake news as “news I don’t like but have no strong rebuttal to.”