Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union, took to the stage on the first night of the Republican National Convention (RNC) with some fiery words for this nation’s “corporate elite.”
“I travel all across this country and meet with my members every week. You know what I see? An American worker being taken for granted,” he said, garnering applause. “The American people … know the system is broken. We all know how Washington is run.”
News reporting in the aftermath of the speech was quick to emphasize the “rare” nature of a union boss appearing at a Republican convention, with outlets calling the speech “unlikely” and “surprising.” According to Politico, Donald Trump and his newly announced vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), represent “a new kind of Republican Party,” which finds itself “increasingly attracted” to a “newly ascendant labor movement.”
While it’s true that O’Brien was the first Teamsters president to ever address the RNC, emphasis on the speech’s novelty serves to obfuscate a more sinister truth: Trump’s “pro-worker” messaging is an intentional prong of his broader reactionary, far right agenda. It is not an aberration; it is a tool — one that has been and will be deployed in the service of white supremacy. The history of far right movements teaches us as much.
Of course, it is a shameless lie for Trump to claim that MAGA conservatism has working-class interests at heart. Under his presidency, he gutted workplace safety rules, implemented tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy and made anti-union appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ right to organize, among a slew of other policies that hurt U.S. workers. Recent reporting from The Washington Post noted that Trump has continued to tell donors in closed-door meetings that he will lower their corporate taxes, and he’s encouraged wealthy backers to donate “because unions were giving so much to Democrats.” On July 13, billionaire Elon Musk announced he would commit $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign, a move that arrives as other Silicon Valley executives and investors........