836: The Big Rethink

A quick warning There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife..org. For three weeks, Joe Biden said as forcefully as a human being possibly could say that he would not step down. And for three weeks. It was this agonizing drip, drip, drip. Of people trying to get him to reconsider, and of voters around the country wondering if he was going to reconsider.

Here's how weird it is that this guy, Sean O'Brien, is at the RNC in the first place. President Biden, a Democrat, calls himself the most pro-Union president in history. There's reasons he bailed out union pensions. The teamsters were pushing for that. All his major infrastructure bills have included money and benefits specifically for unions.

So I'm backstage and the rehearsal the night before we came in and they just wanted to show us the setup of the stage.

They're telling Sean how to walk across the stage to the podium. He's going to be the keynote speaker on Night One.

And so they said, No, you've got to do a dog leg, right when you come out of the stage and come down. But the gentleman said, You know golf, you know how you do a dog leg, right? I said, Look, in my business, if you're a good golfer, you're a bad representative. I don't golf. So, he says, just make like, a little arc.

He's like, Here's a bad example.

So here I am, hopefully delivering the most powerful speech for American workers. And I'm debating what a dog leg is with the person. So it actually was typical to my nature. I get distracted and start talking to him about how union officials shouldn't golf because they should be out working.

Sean O'Brien seems to be here to walk a fine line, basically, with Republicans. He's like, Look, this is a major primetime slot where you don't expect to hear from us, where we get to talk to people who aren't usually listening. He describes his mission as enlightening the Republican National Convention on how important workers in unions are to this country. And maybe make some new political allies. He's been on this charm offensive with Republicans for months. He went to Mar-a-Lago, met with Trump, took a thumbs up picture with him.

So, you know, as I think of O'Brien going to the RNC and doing his song and dance, I got to go. What's the message, what's he going to say?

This is Rick Smith's radio show. He's a 35-year teamster, a truck driver. He thinks O'Brien's just going to be part of the Trump campaign's long-running political theater of being a party for blue-collar workers without making any actual policy that helps those workers. To him, it's like, What's O'Brien going to get for this?

You know, the reality is, Sean O'Brien is going to be their whipping boy. They are going to use him and my teamsters union as their hood ornament as they drive their anti-union policy truck right over the top of working people. And the reality is, Sean O'Brien is going to be their dancing show pony, whether he wants.

To be or not?

And they're going to ride him until election day. Because what they understand, what Trump understands, what the RNC gets by giving him this platform, is a lot of his members vote for Republicans. This is making it OK, this is going, yeah, don't worry about your job, don't worry about any of that stuff.

So to see how the song and dance goes over, I pick my spot way up high in the stands and sit with some delegates. I find Todd Gilman, this delegate from Michigan, I know, and make him watch Sean O'Brien's speech with me. Todd's retired a Navy vet, he was in a union decades ago. He got involved with the Republican Party just a few years ago.

I think they're going good.

Yeah, Todd has never heard of Sean O'Brien and does not care about him. It seems all he knows about Teamsters is. Where did the mafia bury Jimmy Hoffa's body? We're waiting for O'Brien's spot in the lineup when suddenly an unannounced guest appears.

Oh, Trump's here.

He's in the building.

Trump, himself, not scheduled to speak, shows up on screen with a dramatically bandaged ear. It's the first night of the convention, our first time seeing him, and his first time in public since the assassination attempt. The crowd is losing it. The camera's following him down the hall, toward the convention room, like he's a fighter headed into the ring. Oh, look at his ear.

He might be coming out.

Your teamster guy might not be talking.

The crowd is jonesing for Trump, but Trump does not take the stage. He sits in the audience, and instead, the guy who appears on stage is a country singer.

As Donald Trump turned his head just slightly, that the bullet missed him just enough to save his life to be the next president of the United States.

The crowd sings Proud to be an American with enthusiasm the chants for Trump.

We love Trump, we love Trump.

But Trump still does not take the stage. Instead, this random guy limps out and stands there, one of the many regular Americans on the program who feel hurt by Biden's policies. He's dubbed on screen as a grandfather. You've got to feel for him. The crowd is chanting We want Trump right into his face.

Oh, she does have a forehead tattoo.

Overall, the vibes are way off. Trump's still in the room, people are clamoring for him to speak. And then, finally, the last speaker of the night, instead of Trump. It's the president of the Teamsters Union, the outsider guy, the person who doesn't necessarily belong here.

Is this the mob boss? There he is.

This is the mob boss.

All right, now you pay attention, tell me what you think.

He's probably a mob boss if he's a Teamsters president.

Clearly, O'Brien has some assumptions about union bosses to overcome with this crowd.

Greetings, delegates and guests, I'm Sean O'Brien, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

OK, big applause. It just gets bigger and I think we all can agree, whether people like him or they don't like him.

In light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough s.

Biggest applause line of the night, by far. Like the catharsis of waiting for. Trump is satisfied by this. A line that Sean will tell me he came up with right then. It wasn't on the Teleprompter, he was just feeling it.

This is huge.

I mean, you've got all these different people that voted for Joe Biden and their families.

Did coming out here and speaking.

This could turn out to be a total butt-kicking in November.

Now the Teamsters are not endorsing Trump tonight. Sean O'Brien has been quite clear about that, but Bob, from Wisconsin, is just hearing the teamsters throw their weight behind Trump. He's not paying close attention to the specifics of what Sean is saying, really. And as it goes on, the speech does get much more specific and much less Republican convention-sounding, basically.

Of their own, we need to call the Chamber of Commerce and the business roundtables what they are, they are unions for big business. And here's another fact.

Do you think that's right?

Yeah, he's right.

Not in that way, but he's 100 percent correct. He talks about major American companies. Not as great examples of entrepreneurship like at a typical Republican convention, but as great examples of corporate greed. Companies like Amazon are bigger than most national economies.

Amazon is valued over $2 trillion.

What is sickening is that Amazon has abandoned any national allegiance.

Amazon's sole focus is on lining its own pockets. People are like, Am I with this? Companies are bad. It's a little awkward, but then O'Brien pulls out a magic word that sells in this room.

Remember, elites have no party.

Elites have no nation, their loyalty is to the balance sheet and the stock price at the expense of the American worker. I love this guy.

I can't stand Amazon. Yeah, I love this guy.

At some point, the crowd seems to hear themselves cheering wildly for organized labor and against corporatists. And it does get a little more strained feeling in the room. There are no consequences for the company, only the worker rate to work, rate to work.

On underfunded public assistance.

And who foots the bill? the individual taxpayer?

The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are corporations, and this is real.

Corruption? We must put workers first.

By the end of the speech, Todd's feeling about this guy he'd never heard of before.

He's knocking it out of the park.

I'm glad I stuck around and listened to him. Thanks.

When I talked to O'Brien after the speech in the lobby of the Grand Pfister Hotel, I wanted to know if he felt what I was feeling about. The awkwardness in the room, the uncertain silence when he started wailing on the chamber of commerce and big American companies, did you feel a feeling in the room like this is going over? Weird.

Not at all, not at all.

I mean, I felt real comfortable, I knew that, you know, it's like anything else if you're in a crowd and someone's talking about a situation. And you know, you may think you're the subject of it, or you may think that pertains to you. It may be a little bit more uncomfortable for them than it was for me.

Overall, he feels pretty great about the speech, he got his message out. He thinks that now he'll get calls from Republican legislators who weren't meeting with him before. Like, there's this one Senate bill right now that the big unions are really fighting for, it's called the Pro Act.

Not yet.

Not yet, but we're working on it.

Do you think you got some people?

Well, the bill that's currently there.

Right?

So if you know you're not going to get support, it's not going to pass. Wouldn't it make sense to figure out what could pass, right bipartisan?

Yeah.

Do you think you got people in that room to reconsider?

I know that for a fact, how do you know? because I've had the conversations.

Can you give me an example?

I cannot but stay tuned.

Now, the very next day, the Teamsters announced there was a new co-sponsor of the House version of the bill, a third Republican House member from Oregon. Because of the speech, we don't know. Rick Smith. The 35-year teamster with the radio show, watched the convention, watched the speech from his union president, and I called him afterwards.

I fear he did everything that I thought he was going to do, because, look, I don't think anybody remembers what he says tomorrow. Other than Trump's a tough s.o.b. There may be a quote, but what they're going to remember is he was there for Donald Trump.

Rick saw Sean's speech as just another piece of the political theater playing out at the RNC. More working man cosplay. Like Trump's selection of J..D. Vance as vice president. In his opinion, Sean O'Brien praised Vance in his speech. Vance's brand is kind of made-in-America economic populism.

I go back to this idea that there are Republicans that support labor. J..D. Vance walked a picket line. Yeah, okay, he walked a picket line, but he doesn't support workers. Right to organize.

Yeah, it's the snake's nature.

Right?

And this is, that's these people's nature.

O'Brien's response is, Maybe the snake is changing. We can make them change, parties change, can't get things done if that's your uncompromising approach.

I mean, look, you look at the Democratic Party 20 years ago as compared to now, I think we can all agree there's been significant change. Conversely, you look at the Republican Party 20 years ago and look at it today, I mean, there's been significant change.

You don't have to go back 20 years. In this case. With this election, you can look at the Biden administration and the Trump administration, and one is more pro-labor than the other.

Doubt about that, and I can speak to that all day long. I mean, President Biden fixed pensions, barred a lot of work, passed the Chips Act, infrastructure Bill, all that stuff. There's no doubt. But that doesn't mean that we can't work with anybody else that doesn't have the same labor record.

This sounds either wickedly pragmatic or hopelessly naive. But however much the Democrats and Joe Biden have done for organized labor, the Democrats could definitely lose in November. And Trump, who is sitting right across the hall from O'Brien, up on stage, performing, watching him closely with that martyred ear, he might be the guy he'll have to negotiate with.

Zoe Chase is the producer on our show Act two, Adam and William. You know, who July hasn't been so great for?

Well, I think, like most Americans, I felt the debate was an unmitigated disaster for President Biden. I mean, we all remember the times he couldn't keep his train of thought, he lost his place, he seemed incoherent.

I want to ask you a question that I worry might be a little awkward for you to answer, and I hope you can answer it. Honestly, the side of President Biden that we all saw on television that night during the debate. You're in D..C. you hear a lot of things, I'm sure. Had you seen that side of him before that night?

Yes, yes, it is. I've seen the president fairly regularly as a member of Congress, although it does feel like his staff is hiding him far more than they used to. But I've seen a dramatic change, in particular over the last several months. I saw him at the White House Christmas Ball and he looked older and frailer, but he was excited to see me. Quickly recounted things we've done together or whatnot.

How so?

Well, it was more like the things that we saw in the debate, not that bad, but more in that direction.

Like him, having a hard time summoning the words for things.

More like that, yes, but as someone who's been a very long-time Joe Biden fan, as someone who's admired him, as someone who's been a mentee of his. It was hard to see, and it was concerning to the point where. Although I don't think there's a single American who expected what we saw the night of that debate, I wasn't entirely surprised.

Over the next few days, Moulton says he tried to call everybody he knew in the White House, anybody close to the inner circle, to express his concerns about the president's performance and the path ahead.

I made a lot of phone calls and I got nothing in response. Now I'm not offended by that. I don't want to come across as thinking that the White House should return my phone calls. But given the circumstances, you'd expect some low-level aide to just give me a call and say, we've heard your concerns. Here's what we're doing about them. But it was just a wall of silence.

What did that say to you?

It said to me that they're not taking this seriously. We needed to hear a new plan, and first, you just simply need to hear that. They're being honest about the situation at hand. But I wasn't hearing any of that.

It's five days after the debate, before the first Democratic lawmaker calls for Biden to step down. A day later, a second one does that. Same night, Moten releases a very polite, pretty hedgy statement, saying I have grave concerns about President Biden's ability to defeat Donald Trump.

But then later that night, I showed my statement to a friend who was visiting a marine.

Wbur.

When we were talking about the statement, I just simply added those few words he should step aside.

And with that, Seth Moulton became the third Democrat to demand the president step down. He told me he didn't expect tons of his colleagues to join him and follow suit, even though so many of them agreed that Biden should step aside. That's just how Congress works. He says. He's in other situations where his colleagues agree on important stuff behind the scenes, but don't take a public stand.

I didn't, frankly, expect a lot of people to jump right in with me, but I mean, I'm sorry to admit that.

And so what happened? Watching the news? I really wondered if for somebody like you, if after making a statement like that, you're walking through the halls of Congress, you're going down to the floor. Are you like a pariah? Are people not meeting your eye? What's it like?

Well, it was interesting. I was very curious what would happen the first time. I came back to Washington and walked out onto the House floor for votes that evening. And it did seem like people were just avoiding me, like they didn't want to be caught in a conversation.

He says he did try to lobby. Some of these colleagues told them they should come forward publicly also, and a few did, but generally most did not.

People who were concerned about the chaos, or supposed chaos of what might come next. People who were unsure whether this should go directly to Vice President Harris or should be some sort of an open mini-primary, as James Carville and Jim Clyburn have suggested.

Moulton spoke at that meeting. And afterwards, he says, colleagues who were not sticking their necks out publicly continued to tell him that they liked what he was saying and doing in public. Do you feel impatient or frustrated with them?

Yes, yes, I mean, I'll be honest, look, I know people have very different political backgrounds and constituencies to represent. I know some people are hearing more folks back home who just want Biden to stay in the race. At least I'm guessing that they do.

And what is your read of the politics of this? You're in a safe Democratic district. a pretty safe Democratic district. Is this good for you politically? Calls and emails and texts and stuff to your office. are they mostly people supporting you, coming out and saying this about the president?

Interestingly, the calls and messages we've received from people in the district are very supportive. It's just thank you for saying what we all saw. But there seems to be some kind of organized campaign nationally to attack me. Because a lot of the messages on social media, on Twitter and to our office that come from outside the district have been highly critical.

Do you think it's possible that your own party, or your own president, is organizing people to yell at you online?

I mean, that's pretty standard practice. I think. I don't know if that's exactly what's happening right now, or it's just self-organizing groups or even Twitter bots. I mean, I don't really know. We haven't spent a lot of time digging into it.

For a lot of us, reading news reports during the three weeks before, President Biden dropped out as the days rolled on. And President Biden kept insisting that. He didn't think he lost any ground in the race and he wasn't going to listen to anybody but himself. On this, the chances of him actually leaving the race seemed to get more and more remote. But this past Monday, Congressman Moulton told me that from where he sat, the whole thing was still very much an open question. Even after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, that photo with his fist in the air.

I mean, look from my narrow perspective and the phone calls I've received. It's intensified calls for President Biden to step aside. It's going to be even harder for Democrats to win after that attempt at assassination. So how do we increase pressure on the White House?

I understand that you were on a phone call that President Biden was on this weekend. What can you say about that?

It was a Zoom meeting and he was speaking with the new Democratic Coalition, and there are a few dozen of us on with him. I'm not going to share details of a confidential meeting, but I'll just say that it was discouraging. It left me feeling affirmed of my position and felt like things are bad and getting worse. This was not a high-stakes debate, this was just a low-stakes conversation with a bunch of fellow Democrats.

How so?

It just seemed like he's not taking our concerns seriously.

So as we record this, it's Monday, July 15th. 19 members of Congress and one senator are with you, basically, in total, calling for President Biden to step down. And then the rest of the Democratic Party elected officials are on the other side. How is that feeling?

Well, first of all, that's just not an accurate characterization. 19 plus 1 are public. The majority are with me.

Can I ask you, are you in a sort of perverse situation? Where? When you watch the president now on TV? You're sort of hoping for him to slip up? Like, if he slips up more, it'll speed him on the path towards having to step down.

It's an interesting question. No, I'm not hoping the president will slip up, but I am hoping that something happens. To push him over the edge, to make him realize, to face reality. Here, I think it's important to say, Ira, that I genuinely love Joe Biden.

Is there some moment between you that especially stands out, or you think captures what it was like in the past between you and him?

President Biden used to have me over for breakfast when he was vice president.

Knowing him to the degree that you do, are you surprised that he won't give up?

He's incredibly tenacious.

That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

I was chatting with a friend of a friend, Zoe Kuszlewski, at a bar when she casually mentioned she was about to attempt to break the world record for speed. Typing the alphabet using only her pinkies, it took me a minute to process. There's a world record for typing with your pinkies. How do you even know that's a thing?

My sister, I stole it.

Sisters So twisted, right? My sister has something and I want to take it from her. Here's how it all started. One day, Zoe's sister Eliza texted her this LOL. I don't know if you heard, but I broke a world record tonight.

My next texts were.

Wow.

So it was sort of instantaneous your desire to take this record from her.

Yeah, I guess so, and I was joking, but it was coming from a true place of like, I really do bet I could do it, like, Should I? No, I shouldn't.

Unless.

And she said, If you keep practicing, I bet you can get it. And I said, I think I could too, but I would feel like an asshole lol, she said. They have the same one. For Alphabet Forwards. The record is 5.7 seconds.

Zoe, right then and there, decided that she would go for trying to beat the record, for typing the alphabet with your pinkies forward. Like she's not dethroning her sister and taking her record.

Because to me, that was like a way to just ever so slightly sidestep the idea of, uh, coming for her gig.

And did you think, like, did you think that was gonna work? did you think that was believable?

Um.

No.

There's a specific kind of mind game endemic to sisterhood. And I want to use this stupid pinky thing to examine that. How something so small can blow up because of deep stuff from the past. Like in Zoe's case, from her perspective, Eliza's always been upstaging her. They're both just a few years out of college, but Eliza's already a software engineer with a high-paying job. Zoe's a nanny.

Like, I'm talking eating all my meals in the company of, like, a therapist, basically, or a nutritionist. And now I was like, Okay, like, now it's time to work myself back into the real world.

Does it feel like she's like rubbing her life like in your face?

I.

For yes, I mean, for a few good minutes. I was like I was just kind of like this was my moment. Like. I felt really proud of myself for getting through treatment, I felt like I had just kind of had my own accomplishment.

And that's when Record Scratch. She got the text from Eliza and photos Eliza was surrounded by friends. Everyone's raising their pinkies and celebrating.

And I'm sitting alone on my couch, no one is around me. I'm just like sitting, kind of stewing in my own emotions.

So Zoe finds a typing speed website that can time her and starts rage typing with her pinkies.

Eliza always just seemed to come naturally to. she was always athletic, she like ran track. I felt like Eliza was the daughter that my dad dreamed of.

For dessert, he might serve Zoe fruit, while Eliza got pie. There'd be little critical comments. Zoe's dad had been fat, lost weight his senior year of high school and felt like it made life so much easier. He thought he was helping Zoe, but now sees how wrong-headed all that was.

All this from a pinky world record. It is all connected, but it is pretty wild that all this stuff is coming up.

Six months go by and Zoe's getting faster by the millisecond. Early on, she double-checks with Eliza. Are you sure you're okay with this? and Eliza's like, Yeah, sure, so Zoe trains on.

Sweatbands around my head and my wrists because it was like my athletic.

Like your rocky moment?

Yeah, it was fully my rocky moment and I should have gotten like tiny little sweatbands for my pinkies. That was a missed opportunity.

And Ben Liguori yay.

Zoe goes up to her computer, holds her hands in the air, cracks her knuckles and wiggles her fingers, warms up her pinkies. I'm in position.

Great, okay.

Are we ready?

Three, two, one go.

Done you got it? I got it.

Yay.

4.

So yeah, as you know, I got the record.

How do you feel about that?

I'm excited for you.

Thank you.

Eliza congratulates her, but also says.

For me, I'm really over the whole record thing, to be honest. It's almost been nine months now since I did it, so I'm very over it. I'm just excited for you, I don't really care anymore.

True.

I felt like I could hear Zoe deflating. On the call, she went from cheering and laughing to being ashamed for even caring. This was such a sister counterattack. She seemed so harsh, but when I sat down with Eliza to talk about it, she was warm, self-deprecating.

I come in frazzled, my hands, have a little ketchup on them.

So I played the call for her and just asked her, what was up with that? How do you think you sound in this?

Not great, I mean, I think I sound offensive and upset, I think so I'm like, I don't even really care, but for you, it's different.

Here's the thing. Eliza knew Zoe was recording her, and in good sister fashion. She'd said she was okay with it, but she wasn't really, so she was flustered and uncomfortable.

And like, I guess I was just like, why is her first response to compete with me and one-up me? And I was just like, instead of being happy for me? She saw it as this competition and her first response was like, I can do it better. This is this cool thing that I tried to achieve, and now you're trying to beat it.

Yeah, why are you coming after me?

Yeah, and I think it's the fact that her first text after was like, I bet I can do it faster.

Right, she didn't even say congratulations first, yeah.

So then it's like, if that's where this is coming from, like, that feels hurtful. The entire way it was phrased was just doing it better than me.

Eliza didn't say any of this to Zoe, though she felt like it was a dumb thing to get her feelings hurt over. So instead, she texted Zoe, I dare you. Eliza says Zoe always trying to one-up her this way. Eliza doesn't get it.

With Zoe not competing, like, to me, it's like not even comparable. I've always admired the fact that, like, she's out in L.A. living her dreams, and it's just that she is in a very different career path. But I always think, like, everything she's doing there is amazing, and she's married and she has a house.

Yes, Zoe is married, she lives in a nice house, she and her wife have a great relationship. Eliza hasn't yet checked off those big life boxes. She's also, Eliza told me, the performer of the family.

I felt like she set the tone, like she was player one on the WiI, like she had to go to the bathroom first when we got home from the car ride. Not in any resentful way, just in like a that was the pecking order.

She told me she had no idea that the day she texted Zoe about her world record was the day Zoe ended treatment and Zoe never said anything. And she also had no idea that from the time they were kids, Zoe felt inferior to her.

Yeah, that's shocking to me, shocking. Yeah, I mean, like, I just don't see myself in that role, like, Wow.

Eliza says that growing up she had no idea. Zoe thought Eliza was the favorite the daughter their dad really wanted. She never noticed that she got dessert and Zoe got fruit.

I mean, it makes me sad to think that some of that, I think, especially now that we're older, I'm very aware of. But I definitely again wasn't as a child. And it makes me sad to think of like Zoe going through all that and feeling very alone, and me having no idea like that is so isolating.

But then I also see it from your perspective, because it, sort of, like, has nothing to do with you.

But it does like I don't see it from my perspective, it does have to do with me, I mean, even if it doesn't directly. Like, I wish I could have been there for her and like, Yeah, I don't know why I wasn't.

Since this whole Pinky record thing, for the first time, Zoe and Eliza have started talking about all this directly. They called each other compared notes. Zoe was like, Oops, I didn't say congratulations after you got your record, did I? and Eliza was like, I had no idea.

Donna Baker She's the co-host of the podcast Pretty Sure I Can Fly with Johnny Knoxville. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Her story was produced by Glalie Sullivan and edited by Nadia Rehman.

Let's be respectful of the president and push him gently in the right position. I'm Ira Glass.

Back next week with more stories of this American life.

You turn your back on me and you, please don't you run up on my side like we could sit up?

Tight.