The autoworker who was flipped off by President Trump on Tuesday said he has no regrets about heckling the commander-in-chief over his administration’s slow-walking of the Epstein files.
T.J. Sabula, a 40-year-old member of United Auto Workers Local 600, said he shouted at Mr. Trump as the president toured a Ford F150 plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
“As far as calling him out, no regrets whatsoever,” Mr. Sabula told The Washington Post.
However, Mr. Sabula did tell the outlet that he has been suspended from his job pending an investigation. He said he’s concerned about the future of his job and believes that he has been “targeted for retribution” for “embarrassing Trump in front of his friends.”
Mr. Trump appeared to give Mr. Sabula the middle finger after he yelled “pedophile protector” at the president.
Mr. Sabula, who told The Post he’s politically independent but has voted for Republicans, said he was specifically referencing the slow release of the Justice Department files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,” he said. “And today I think I did that.”
In a video posted online by TMZ, Mr. Trump calls back, “F—- you” and then points at the worker before flipping the worker off with his middle finger.
“A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Washington Times.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin seized on the video and used it to bash the president.
“Protecting pedophiles and saying [f—-] you to American workers,” Mr. Martin wrote.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and the public have expressed frustration over the Justice Department’s slow release of the files.
Since Dec. 19, one month after the Epstein Files Transparency Act went into effect, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has put out 12,285 documents, comprising 125,575 pages of investigative materials. That amounts to roughly 1% of the documents in the Justice Department’s possession.
Earlier Tuesday, a group of bipartisan lawmakers asked a federal judge in Manhattan to force the Justice Department to promptly release all of the investigative materials.
Mr. Trump has accused Democrats of using the Epstein files as a weapon to distract from his administration’s accomplishments. The president, who was friends with Epstein until they had a falling out in the early 2000s, has been mentioned in some of the files, but there has been no evidence that he was involved in any wrongdoing.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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