After being called a "pedophile protector" while touring a Ford plant in Michigan on Tuesday, President Trump lashed back, twice mouthing "f--k you" and then giving the middle finger to the auto worker who made the accusation. That worker has now been suspended, but says he has "no regrets whatsoever" about accusing Trump of helping to conceal information about convicted 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,” 40-year-old TJ Sabula told the Washington Post. “And today I think I did that.” Suspended and with his job in peril, Sabula said he's being "targeted for political retribution" for "embarrassing Trump in front of his friends." 

Sabula's outburst came as Trump was touring a Ford F-150 plant in Dearborn. It happened while Trump was briefly unaccompanied by reporters, but someone captured the exchange on cellphone video that quickly made its way to gossip site TMZ and then went viral. “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 told the Post. 

In the video, Sabula, a United Auto Workers Local 600 line worker, can be heard yelling "pedophile protector!" at Trump. The president stared at Sabula, mouthed "f--k you" twice, and then gave a middle finger as he walked on. Sabula said he was about 60 feet from the president, and that Trump could hear what he yelled "very, very, very clearly." Sabula calls himself a political independent who hasn't voted for Trump, but has backed other Republicans. 

Sabula appears to be one of many Americans who resent Trump's change of stance regarding the release of millions of pages of Department of Justice documents relating to investigations into Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Before being elected for a second term, Trump told podcaster Lex Fridman, "I'd be inclined to do the Epstein [release], I'd have no problem with it." Asked about a "list of clients that went to [Epstein's] island that has not been made public," Trump replied, "It's very interesting isn't it? It probably will be, by the way, probably." 

In July 2025, however, conservatives were stunned when Trump suddenly called the Epstein-files controversy a "hoax," going so far as to disown anyone who demanded transparency. After lashing out at a reporter who inquired about the issue, Trump raged on social media: 

"The Radical Left Democrats have hit pay dirt, again! ... Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this "bullshit," hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.

I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!" 

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was enacted in November, gave the DOJ a Dec. 19 deadline for releasing "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" relating to Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. It released some 100,000 pages on the due date, but the DOJ subsequently revealed that the first batch represented a tiny 1.9% of the total inventory -- before accounting for duplicates. 

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna have led the push to compel the release of the documents. Beyond missing the deadline, the two accuse Trump's DOJ of making improper redactions that violate the law that now mandates transparency. Earlier this month, they asked a federal judge to appoint a special master -- an independent monitor -- to supervise the DOJ's handling of the release process.  

"Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” Massie and Khanna wrote to Judge Paul E. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York. “Absent an independent process, as outlined above, we do not believe the DOJ will produce the records that are required by the Act and what it has represented to this Court.” Separately, Massie told reporters that, in addition to over-redacting, the DOJ is "releasing [information] in a manner as to just flood the channel with stuff that doesn’t matter while they withhold the things that do matter.”

While Trump's critics are likely to claim his response to the auto worker in Michigan was unprecedentedly undignified for someone holding high office in America, note that, in 1976, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was famously photographed giving the finger to a heckling student at SUNY Binghamton. The student had given the gesture first, and Rockefeller said he was merely "responding in kind."