Former US President Donald Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social on Friday that the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is set to speak at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee next month.
Trump said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien had “accepted my invitation to speak at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.” The powerful labor union, with 1.3 million members, has not yet endorsed a candidate in the presidential election. It backed Democrat Joe Biden for President in 2020.
Kara Dennis, a spokeswoman for the union, said O’Brien has offered to speak at both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
“The Teamsters are thrilled that former President Trump has extended this invitation, and we would be equally thrilled if the Democratic National Convention were to do the same,” she said. In the current polarized political climate, it is unusual for an individual to speak at both conventions.
O’Brien, who met with both Biden and Trump earlier this year, said the union would do a lot of polling to determine its support, “probably after the Republican and Democratic conventions.”
Both Trump and Biden are seeking to garner the votes of rank-and-file union members, whose support could be crucial in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the Nov. 5 election. Biden has cast himself as the most pro-labor president in history and appeared on picket lines in Michigan during last fall’s autoworkers strike. He already has significant support from unions, including early endorsements from the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers.
In the run-up to the general election, Trump has sought to garner support from labor unions for Biden, hoping to further garner the support of blue-collar workers that helped him win in 2016.
The Teamsters is one of the nation’s largest labor unions, representing truck drivers, dockworkers, airline pilots, public servants and many other sectors of workers.
