Former President Donald Trump dismissed the United Auto Workers union as a “hopeless case” on Friday following UAW President Shawn Fain’s endorsement of President Joe Biden.

Trump also told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that a Biden reelection would leave UAW workers without jobs.

Fresh off a second meeting with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the country’s largest and most influential unions, Trump explained, “I never spoke to UAW.” According to the former president, “They’re a hopeless case.”

“They’ve led their industry right into the poor house, and now they’ve finished it off because, if Biden gets elected, you won’t have an autoworker working in the United States,” he claimed.

Last week, Biden received the similarly influential endorsement of Fain, who called Trump “a scab.”

“Donald Trump is a billionaire, and that’s who he represents,” Fain said of his choice to support Biden. “Joe Biden bet on the American worker, while Donald Trump blamed the American worker.”

Responding to the UAW president’s endorsement of his opponent, Trump said, “Shawn Fain is a Weapon of Mass Destruction on Auto Workers and the Automobile Manufacturing Industry in the United States!” 

Fain’s denunciation of Trump could present a threat to the former president, who has made it his goal to court workers, particularly in the Rust Belt, as the Republican Party’s base continues to shift. Trump was the only Republican presidential candidate to meet with the Teamsters, with the exception of former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. And his biggest primary foe, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who trails him significantly in the polls, has signaled her noninterest in meeting with the union.

However, data have shown that members of the large union don’t necessarily follow the leadership’s voting recommendations. In 2016, the UAW said 28% of members were believed to have voted for Trump against Hillary Clinton. Surveys taken before the election had suggested the number of the UAW’s roughly 415,000 members set to choose Trump would be closer to 25%.

In 2020, the political shifts among workers became even more evident as nationwide, 40% of voters from union households opted for Trump, and 56% chose Biden.

However, this time around, Fain is predicting Biden will take more of his union’s members. Biden has sought to shore up union support, traveling to Michigan during the group’s strike last year to deliver remarks and even making history by joining the picket line with workers.

Trump doesn’t agree. He hit at Biden’s electric vehicle promotion and efforts to meet certain thresholds of sales and ownership in the United States. “This electric car mandate is insane,” Trump said. “They don’t go far. They cost too much. And they’re going to be made in China because they have the material to make” them.

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“Right now, they have tens of thousands of electric vehicles for sale. Nobody wants to buy them,” the former president added.

Fain said this isn’t a worry for the UAW. “The UAW has been at the front of environmental and working-class issues. The biggest thing to us, no matter which way we go in this, we’re going to have security for our members and for the working class people,” he said. “We’re not afraid of where we’re headed.”