After having supported the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 1996, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – one of the nation’s largest unions – decided not to back a candidate in 2024.
It was a decision that came two days after the union’s leaders met with Kamala Harris in September, but it also came a month after Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien broke norms by delivering a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention.
On Thursday’s show, O’Brien joined Megyn to discuss why the Harris-Walz ticket did not resonate with Teamsters members and what happened when the former vice president met with the union.
The 2024 Candidates
Teamsters endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, but O’Brien – who became general president in December 2023 – did not believe the vice president was the right choice to replace Joe Biden. “We knew that President Biden was failing. We could tell… You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist or a medical professional to figure it out,” he said. “And we knew that Kamala Harris wasn’t the answer to what… American working people [needed].”
Harris “wasn’t the answer,” in his view, because of the way she took the electorate for granted. “I don’t trust her, to be honest with you – the way she talked to people, the way she demanded support,” O’Brien explained. “I think most Americans don’t want to be told what to do; they want to be told what someone is going to do for them. I mean, we pay their salaries. We’re their constituents.”
That aloofness continued, O’Brien recalled, when Harris met with the union in September 2024. He said each presidential candidate was offered a round table-style meeting with rank-and-file members and the general executive board and given a 16-question questionnaire in advance.
“President Trump’s team responded immediately in December [2023]… The Biden administration was very difficult to schedule, and they pushed back probably until, like, May [2024],” he shared. “And then when he got out of the race, Kamala Harris came in and was very difficult to deal with.”
While O’Brien said most candidates answered all of the questions, Biden answered “about nine out of 16” and Harris did even less than that. “When Kamala Harris came in to answer, her team was very clear that she was only going to answer a certain amount of questions,” he said. “Halfway through, I got a note slipped to me saying that this will be the last question – she only answered four of them.”
And those few responses she did give did not move the needle. “She didn’t answer the questions at all with any type of real substance. I just remember [thinking], This lady is not even answering this question,” O’Brien said. “The answers were crazy, and it was telling at that point in time that, you know, she had a sense of entitlement to the position.”
The Left’s Arrogance
To that point, O’Brien said Harris’ closing statement to the group was that she would win the election with or without their support. “That’s pretty arrogant,” he noted. “We had a pretty diverse rank and file presence there, along with our general executive board. It didn’t sit well with us, it didn’t sit well with our members, and, look, we polled extensively and 65 percent of our members were voting for President Trump.”
Megyn called the arrogance “stupid politics,” but O’Brien said it is in line with “the attitude” of the Democrat Party today. He noted that he took over as Teamsters with the goal of working in a bipartisan way “with the people that are going to represent working people, whether it’s Democrat, Republican, or independents.”
Once those efforts began in earnest, O’Brien said “it was ironic how fast the Democrats turned on us” while also still expecting their support. “I think they just thought it… was a given. They were just going to tell us what we wanted to hear and that they were going to win,” he explained. “And look, our members are sophisticated. I think the American people are a lot more sophisticated, and they pay attention. The arrogance, I think, was a downfall.”
He said Harris’ choice of running mate didn’t help either. “It didn’t work because [Tim Walz] embraced the social justice warrior rhetoric that was going around from the far-left,” O’Brien noted. “I know my members better than anybody else, and I know working people. During this election, it wasn’t about social issues at all. It was about the economy; it was about jobs; it was about taking home more in your paycheck; it was about less inflation.”
“That’s not the narrative they spoke, which further leads to a point where you’ve lost touch with the people that you should be representing and you don’t talk to the people you should be representing,” O’Brien concluded. “So, that narrative clearly blew them out of the water.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with O’Brien by tuning in to episode 1,073 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.