“You can have any opinion you want but one thing is clear: President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid to listen to new, loud and often critical voices,” O’Brien said to a round of cheers.
O’Brien’s appearance marks an unusual departure from one of the nation’s most powerful unions, which has supported Democrats for decades, and comes at a time when the GOP is divided over whether to embrace a shift toward populism. Right wing politics.
In his speech, the union leader from outside Boston criticized big businesses including Amazon, Uber and Lyft for selling out American workers. Sen. especially for being willing to question corporate power. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was showered with praise. .
O’Brien, who was invited to speak by former President Donald Trump, has been using the union’s endorsement as political leverage in Washington. Most major unions have rallied behind President Biden, whose administration has gone too far to win unions.
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O’Brien has requested to speak at the Democratic National Convention in August, but has yet to receive an invitation, Teamsters spokeswoman Cara Dennis told The Washington Post.
The Teamsters, with some 1.3 million members, many in key battleground states, will not endorse after the two conventions, Dennis said last week.
O’Brien explained his decision to wait for approval this year as an effort to carefully assess the union’s options, saying his members’ votes “will not be taken for granted.”
Having won the union’s top job in 2021 as a reformist candidate who promised greater member involvement in union decision-making, some labor experts say O’Brien may feel pressure to consider members’ diverse political leanings. Experts say O’Brien knows that many rank-and-file Teamsters are Republicans — and Trump supporters.
Trump’s flirtation with O’Brien began earlier this year, when the two met privately in January at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The meeting angered some of the union’s left-wing leaders and members, with one group member calling Trump a “known union buster, scapegoat and agitator.”
The Teamsters president and rank-and-file members met with both Trump and Biden on separate occasions at the union’s headquarters in Washington. The union donated $45,000 to the RNC convention fund this year, its first major donation to the GOP in decades.
It also donated $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee last December and $15,000 in March.
Sen. from Ohio. J.T. Trump announced Monday that he had chosen Vance as his running mate, marking another significant move toward the GOP’s embrace of the right. A populist agenda that blends a conservative stance on culture war issues with economic nationalism is intended to protect American workers from free trade policies and industrialization.
Vance participated in an auto workers’ picket in Ohio late last year — though he opposed pro-labor legislation. And Hawley joined the auto workers and Teamsters on strike. In return, the Teamsters sent $5,000 to Hawley’s re-election campaign this year.
Trump has called himself “pro-labor” in an effort to portray himself as a defender of the working class, but he has supported many policies that limit the labor force. As president, he appointed a chairman of the National Labor Relations Board whose policies and rulings weakened workers’ rights. Trump has some union endorsements outside of law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Biden, the self-proclaimed “most pro-union president in history,” has made major strides for unions. Many of his policies benefited the Teamsters, including his nearly $36 billion pension bailout in 2022, part of the American Recovery Plan, which restored the retirement accounts of 350,000 Teamsters members.
