Teamsters president Sean O’Brien raged in a podcast interview that Democrats “f–ked us over for the last 40 years” — after a poll showed rank-and-file union members planned to overwhelmingly back Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 election.
“I’ll be honest with you, I’m a Democrat, but they have f–ked us over for the last 40 years,” O’Brien told comedian Theo Von on Monday’s episode of the “This Past Weekend” podcast.
“And for once, and not all of them, but for once, we’re standing up as a union, probably the only one right now, saying, ‘What the f–k have you done for us?’” O’Brien added.
“And I’m getting attacked from the left and we’ve given — since I’ve been in office, two and a half years, we’ve given the Democratic machine $15.7 million. We’ve given Republicans about $340,000, truth be told. So it’s like, you know, people say the Democratic Party is the party of the working people. They’re bought and paid for by Big Tech.”
O’Brien, whose union typically endorses Democrats, spoke at the Republican National Convention in July.
The Teamsters chose not to formally back a candidate this year, despite releasing poll results showing members supported Trump by a margin of nearly two-to-one
Last month, the union said an electronic poll of members found 59.6% backed Trump, the populist former president, while just 34% preferred Vice President Kamala Harris. A phone poll of members had nearly identical results.
“If 60% of our members don’t support you, the f–king system’s broken. You need to fix it, stop pointing fingers at Sean O’Brien, stop pointing fingers at the Teamsters union. Look in the mirror,” O’Brien told Von.
“Before, you always had Democrats fighting for working people, and, you know, Republicans, now, we kind of see a switch where working people feel like, number one, they’ve been left behind by the Democratic Party. Two, you know, the Republicans say they want to be working-class [and] represent the working class. They have an opportunity to do it.”
The trash-talking union boss has clashed with members of both parties — nearly getting into a fistfight with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) last year during a Senate hearing.
O’Brien also told Von that he had a “heated discussion” that “got f–king ugly” with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last month over his union’s drift away from the Democrats.
“Chuck Schumer is a piece of s—,” O’Brien said, claiming that at one point, the Brooklyn Democrat wouldn’t sign a support letter during a standoff against UPS.
O’Brien also trashed California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for vetoing a Teamster-backed bill to effectively ban autonomous trucking.
“The guy that looks like in Bradley Cooper, the governor of California, Newsom. That guy is bought and paid for by Big Tech,” he said. “He had the opportunity to protect the general public and his constituents from AI, from autonomous vehicles, from all this bulls—.”
O’Brien noted that the Teamsters previously chose not to endorse a Democrat in 1996 after incumbent President Bill Clinton crafted the NAFTA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, saying “it f–ked a lot of our members over and we lost jobs as a result of it. So we couldn’t.”
Trump renegotiated NAFTA as president.
In the interview, O’Brien also said “our biggest opponent right now is Amazon and we’re gonna crush them” — slamming the internet retailer’s model of using independent contractors who technically are not considered employees eligible for standard benefits.
“We wanna take on the schoolyard bullies and put them on their knees,” he said.
“You got Uber, Lyft, you’ve got Google, you’ve got all these tech companies — and the sad part is, you know, these politicians that claim to be out there fighting for working people and they’re bought and f–king sold by these companies. It’s disgusting.”
O’Brien praised Trump’s plan to eliminate income taxes on overtime pay and said he would seek to hold him to that promise if the Republican wins the election. Harris has not taken a position on that proposal.
“We’re ready to go. Whoever wins, either way, they’ve got to deal with us,” O’Brien said. “And we’re powerful. And we’re not afraid to fight.”