Teamsters Boss Accuses Harris Of Alienating Union During Campaign

Teamsters president Sean O'Brien accused former Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris of alienating his union by allegedly saying they "better get on board" while pressuring for an endorsement during her campaign.

O'Brien described an incident in which Teamsters vice president Joan Corey had an encounter with Harris in a photo op line while appearing on The Free Press founder and editor Bari Weiss' Honestly podcast this week.

“So, Joan goes in the line and Joan says, ‘I’m Joan Corey. I’m a vice president with the Teamsters Union,’ and [Harris] pointed her finger at Joan and said, ‘Teamsters better get on board,’ and so Joan says, ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Yeah, Teamsters better get on board. I don’t know why you haven’t endorsed me yet.’ So she comes back, and she tells me this, and I’m like, ‘The nerve!'" O'Brien said.

The Teamsters president, who had publicly criticized the Democratic previously, claimed that Harris only answered four of the union's executive board's 16 prepared questions during their meeting.

“She really didn’t answer the questions, and then on the fourth question my chief of staff slides me an index card and says, ‘This is the last question. She’s not answering anymore,’ because she wanted to, like, pontificate and give her speech of why the country is the way it is, why we should endorse her," O'Brien said during the Honestly appearance.

O'Brien then paraphrased Harris' closing statement in which he basically claimed that she told union leaders, "Listen, I'm going to win with you or without you."

“And it was like such a smug answer, like, okay, and that turned the majority of the people in that room off her,” he added.

O'Brien said many in the union leadership were turned off by Harris' demeanor and body language from the meeting. The Teamsters ultimately declined to endorse a candidate, despite O'Brien personally having spoken at the Republican National Convention.

“Once we announced that there was going to be no endorsement, that’s when all the keyboard warriors came out and the attacks from the DSA and, you know, my friends that were allegedly my friends that were, you know, high-ranking senators of the Democratic Party,” he said. “Once I spoke at the RNC, then I was, you know, no good.”