Two things Joe Biden hates: union jobs and trying to remember his phone number.
The leader on one of the most prominent U.S. labor unions said he regretted President Biden's move to derail the Keystone XL pipeline project on his first day in office in a new interview.
"I wish he hadn't done that on the first day," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told journalist Jonathan Swan on "Axios on HBO."
Labor groups have said Biden’s day-one decision to nix the Keystone pipeline eliminated 1,000 union jobs off the bat and could kill ten times more in construction jobs that were expected to be created by the project.
"I wish he had paired that more carefully with the thing that he did second, by saying here’s where we’re creating jobs," he said.
He said Washington politicians should consider that Americans don’t want to move across the country for a new job out of the blue – something he gave Biden credit for subsequently proposing.
"We can do mine reclamation, we can fix leaks and we can fix seeps and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in doing all of that stuff," he said.
That’s an improvement over widely panned calls for energy workers to "learn to code" and job training programs that fill equip workers with skills sought after on the opposite side of the country.
"If you destroy 100 jobs in Greene County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and you create 100 jobs in California, it doesn't do those 100 families much good," he said.
Trumka’s criticism of job training programs may have been a subtle jab at Biden, whom he frequently praises. The president once told laid-off coal miners to "learn to code." (Former President Barack Obama has also made similar comments.)
TOPSHOT - Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at Canvas Kick Off at the carpenters Union in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 3, 2020. - The US started voting Tuesday in an election amounting to a referendum on Donald Trump's uniquely brash and bruising presidency, which Democratic opponent and frontrunner Biden urged Americans to end to restore "our democracy." (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)