The Republican Party began its national convention Monday night, with a bow to … (wait for it) … organized labor. You read that correctly.

A few days ago, the Republican National Committee sent out an email with this remarkably ironic headline:

“RNC STATEMENT ON FAILED BIDEN’S ANTI-UNION, PRO-CHINA POLICIES”

This was followed by an even more absurd RNC statement:

As my friend Harold Meyerson, writing for The American Prospect, notes, the RNC statement didn’t address the Republicans’ enduring and ongoing opposition to unions, or the officials Trump appointed when president (Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb, et al.) who devoted themselves to crippling unions in every way they could.

It ignored the assessments of dispassionate historians that Biden is either the most pro-union president since FDR or the most pro-union president ever.

Harold went on to explain that the RNC email was intended as something of a tease, laying a bit of groundwork for the opening night of the Republican convention last night, when the prime-time 10 p.m. speaking slot was awarded to Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters.

Despite the misgivings and stunned disbelief of numerous Teamster officials, O’Brien has been playing footsie with Trump for a number of months, donating $45,000 of the members’ money to help fund the Republican convention (he gave an equal amount to the Democrats), inviting Trump in to speak to his executive board, and now, effectively kicking off the televised portion of the Republican convention.

O’Brien’s openness to Trump overlooks a Biden record that includes bailing out the union’s multi-employer pension fund and jump-starting a manufacturing and infrastructure renaissance with hiring stipulations favoring union workers, Teamsters very much included. For which reason, among many others, a number of Teamster officers have taken issue with O’Brien’s Trumpian tilt.

As Jonathan Weisman has reported in........

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