Just a few moments after Air Force One took off from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, President Donald Trump sat at his desk aboard the plane with a handful of his trusted staff members, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
All of them smiled as Air Force One settled itself after takeoff. The president was heading to one of his favorite parts of the country to mark a deal between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel that few outside of some very determined western Pennsylvania local union steelworkers thought would ever come to fruition.
Trump left the intrigue of Washington and pressures of his position to head toward a hero’s welcome at the Irvin Works plant in West Mifflin. He admitted he hadn’t wrapped his mind around the crowd’s outpouring of gratitude.
On the screen facing Trump was the Will Cain Show on Fox News, which panned to the crowd at the Irvin Works plant. The scene was a sea of orange safety jackets and hard hats, all standing in the building that the workers there call Highway One, on the other side of the rolling mill. The crowd was filled with men and women whose daily jobs leave them with dirt under their nails and pride in their chests because of their impact on everyone’s lives.
Trump stared for the briefest of moments at the scene. He smiled and then drew Bessent’s attention to the screen. Trump is used to an enthusiastic crowd, but this was different: These men and women went against their union to support this deal.
“Look at that, Scott,” Trump said.
One of Trump’s staff members informed him that organizers at the rally had just told the union steelworkers, community leaders, and their family members waiting for the president about the terms of the deal. This includes $14 billion in capital investment projects at U.S. Steel, and the only remaining blast furnace mill in Pittsburgh will get $2.2 billion. It is an investment that will protect 11,400 existing jobs and create and support 14,000 new ones, including over 10,200 in construction.
It also guarantees that the majority of U.S. Steel’s board will be U.S. citizens, and key management members, including the CEO, will also be U.S. citizens. Only U.S. citizens will have direction over trade actions, with oversight from the federal government.
It was a deal Trump said he didn’t want to happen initially.
The morning started at 4 a.m. in western Pennsylvania after the alarm went off. By noon, I was at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
Interviews rarely make me nervous. To me, they should be more of a conversation. The readers get more from that back-and-forth, whether it is with a president, farmer, or hairdresser. It isn’t everyone’s style, but it suits me.
What does make me nervous is logistics — getting to places not just on time but with time to spare. My Google Maps app made it tricky that day by flunking out, which meant I had to rely on my best skill set: a decent sense of directions combined with a 7-year-old Rand McNally map and sheer determination. I only got somewhat turned around when I drove around Andrews’s vast campus.
I have interviewed Trump at least two dozen times over the years, in Erie, Johnstown, Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg. I have also interviewed him at the White House in the West Wing.
These interviews were all unique. But this interview, along with the one we were initially supposed to do on July 13, 2024, in Butler, will be in the history books someday, not because of me, but because of what happened on both days.
In Butler, we were set to do the interview five minutes before the rally, which then changed to five minutes after the rally. That changed to an interview on Trump Force One on the flight back to Bedminster from Butler. Six minutes before he took the stage that day, he had his press advance person, Michel Picard, bring me back to say hello. It was the entire reason I was in Butler that day and witnessed history. That’s also why I wrote the book Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland.
In West Mifflin, it was a different and much happier moment. It will not be forgotten for generations, in the same way that many people in this region have not forgotten Sept. 19, 1977, a day many still call “Black Monday.” That’s when the mills started closing in Youngstown and as many jobs were lost as were saved in West Mifflin late last month.
In 1977, then-President Jimmy Carter ignored the pleas of the Central Labor Union to stop steel imports and ease regulations that were hurting the industry. Carter also refused to meet with the union when it traveled to the White House, as then-Ohio Democratic Sen. John Glenn stood on the U.S. Capitol steps with other elected officials while the crowd waved signs reading, “Save the Steel Industry.”
Carter never bothered to send out an aide to receive the petitions when they arrived.
Few legacy news organizations in New York and Washington, D.C., at the time chronicled the hollowing out of communities and the long-term effects on those left behind. Many of these journalists didn’t understand how this started the incremental movement of the working class toward the Republican Party.
It was only when Trump won his first term in 2016 that it became clear. Trump sealed the deal with the working class for the Republicans. It will be interesting if the legacy media chronicle this with the vigor and intellectual curiosity it deserves. If not, they may ask eight years from now why Republicans keep winning.
I sat beside the president’s desk for most of the short ride, 45 minutes at most, from Maryland to the Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin. When it was time to exit, I imagined we would part ways. Outside, it was pouring, and the winds were rough.
An aide told me I was to ride in “The Beast,” the president’s big vehicle, and Trump, as he was about to descend the stairs, looked back at me to extend the offer himself. My answer was, “Of course!” Trump went down the stairs, and it was my turn behind him. The wind nearly swept me and my umbrella off the staircase. I hoped that my parents and grandchildren were not somehow watching my not-so-graceful exit.
Despite the gusty winds, the roads leading from the airport to Irvin Works were lined shoulder to shoulder with people cheering Trump on with homemade signs thanking him for saving U.S. Steel. Once inside, he met with local elected officials, law enforcement, legendary Pittsburgh Steelers running back and Vietnam War veteran Rocky Bleier, and current Steelers players Mason Rudolph and Miles Killebrew.
A staffer at the event pulled me away and placed me under a girder. Something told me this was not where I was supposed to be. After a few texts, I was sitting with the local labor leaders I have covered for nearly a decade.
Trump took the stage, and before starting the speech, he gave me a shoutout for understanding the people in the room and the Rust Belt in general. “And she even gets me,” he added. At that point, I hoped that maybe my parents and grandchildren were watching.
A breathless White House staffer later tracked me down, and we sprinted back to Trump. It was time for another fascinating ride in “The Beast.”
Trump looked back at the plant. It was raining, which only made the rusting silver parts seem even older.
“You know, Salena, it’s not easy to get a good silver paint,” Trump said. “A good coating. I am going to look into that. They need this plant to look proud again. They do good things here. The people do good things here. They are the best of us.”
Outside, the wind was howling, and the rain was sideways. Yet the people were still lining Trump’s route back to the airport. He waved at them for a very long time.
Back on the plane, I asked him what this day meant to him, what these people meant to him.
“It was a day of strong men and women that loved what I did for them and that appreciated what I did for them,” he said. “They said if it wasn’t for me, this thing would’ve been closed up. In my first term, I put on 25% tariffs. … Nobody understood tariffs except for the workers — they understood. And that kept U.S. Steel open and doing well, and now, they’re going to thrive because today, they got a double hit. They got additional tariffs, and they got $17 billion,” he said of increasing the tariffs to 50%.
A staffer walked in. We were minutes from Andrews, but we couldn’t land. There was a tornado in the way. I started to wonder aloud if flying with him was in his best interest, and everyone laughed.
TRUMP RETURNS PENNSYLVANIA STEEL TO THE BACKBONE OF AMERICA
As we waited for the tornado to pass, the conversation with the president, Leavitt, Bessent, and his staff was casual despite covering serious items. Trump and other Air Force One and White House staffers also talked about a possible golf course and the spectacular pitching of Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes despite the team’s overall poor record, as well as the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
When we landed, it was time for the 4 1/2-hour drive home to western Pennsylvania in an unforgiving storm. As Trump walked toward the stairs, he looked at me and smiled, saying, “You got seven hours today, Salena. Did you get a good interview?”
I just smiled and thought, “What I got was a good story.”
Salena Zito is a national political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
