It’s a scorcher in much of the US, and everyone’s feeling the heat. Senator Claire McCaskill and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri drill down on how to frame Biden’s important executive action that builds on the work of DACA, and how Trump’s Milwaukee comment is playing amid lower crime stats in many of our biggest cities. And the dynamic duo shares some insightful debate prep in anticipation of next week’s ‘Superbowl’ of politics. Then, Laborers Union General President Brent Booker stops by for an inside view of the importance of union work to our lives and our economy, and what his members are most concerned about.
**And a note to listeners: We’ll be releasing our next episode on Friday instead of our usual Thursday, so we can give you some post-debate takeaways.**
Further reading: Here is the 2024 gun violence analysis from the Center of American Progress: Early 2024 Data Show Promising Signs of Another Historic Decline in Gun Violence, based on data from the Gun Violence Archive.
Note: this is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jennifer Palmieri: Hello, welcome to “How to Win 2024.” It’s Thursday, June 20th. It’s the solstice. Exciting. I’m Jennifer Palmieri, and I’m here with my co-host, Claire McCaskill. Hi, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Hey, it feels like the middle of the summer, even though it is only June.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: But I’m hanging out at the Lake of the Ozarks this week, so I will confess that I am hoping for a little bit of lake time before the weekend is over.
Jennifer Palmieri: And what does that look like? Do you go out on the water? Do you go swimming? Like, is that a boat? Is that, like, what is that?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, we have a boat. I’m not as big at swimming in the lake as I am boating on the lake.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: But I used to swim in the lake all the time. You know, I started working down here as a waitress a week after I graduated from high school.
Jennifer Palmieri: No kidding.
Claire McCaskill: So I’ve spent a lot of time at this lake. I like to make the joke, I did just about everything for the first time at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay, moving right along.
Claire McCaskill: Okay.
Jennifer Palmieri: Moving right along, I learned something really important about keeping hydrated yesterday that I feel like the need to share because it blew my mind. Vin Gupta was on “Morning Joe” yesterday about the heat. And so I asked him what people say, like, water is actually not that hydrating. He said water is number 10 on the list of, like, if you look at 14 things that you can drink, water is number 10 on what keeps you the most hydrated. And the number one thing you can drink to stay hydrated is —
Claire McCaskill: Beer!
Jennifer Palmieri: — skim milk. Skim —
Claire McCaskill: Darn.
Jennifer Palmieri: Beer was not on the list, Claire.
Claire McCaskill: Oh shit.
Jennifer Palmieri: Beer was probably 50. Skim milk.
Claire McCaskill: Weird.
Jennifer Palmieri: I found that shocking. He said it has electrolytes and there’s something about the protein in skim milk that helps you absorb more, store more hydration. I don’t know. Also Gatorade. He said Gatorade is it. Okay. So anyway, go ahead. Moving right along.
Claire McCaskill: You know, there’s a mix of wariness and relief this week after President Biden announced a new executive action on immigration where he is building on DACA. You know, this gives a pathway to citizenship for about a half a million people who are married to U.S. citizens but don’t have legal status. We’re going to give a little context to that and make sure that everybody understands how important it is to message this appropriately because it could go sideways if it’s not talked about in the right context.
Jennifer Palmieri: We’ll also dig into how Trump’s Milwaukee comments are playing and the tired GOP tactic of overly hyping a fear of crime in big cities when the reality looks pretty different, friends. And of course, we need to huddle for some debate prep ahead of next week’s first meetup between President Biden and former President Trump. I love a good debate prep strategy.
Add a note to listeners. We’re going to be releasing our next episode on Friday next week instead of our usual Thursday so we can give you post-debate takeaways.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And I’ll be joining the podcast live from Atlanta post-debate, so.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, it’s exciting.
Claire McCaskill: I will be in the middle of the atmosphere of the day after and either it will be a celebration or we will all put a smile on our faces and say, well, that was okay. We’ll see. Later in the episode, Laborers Union General President Brent Booker will join Jen and I to give us a sense of what issues are most important to his members this fall. But before we get to him, let’s talk strategy.
Okay. So, if I were in the room and we were discussing President Biden’s executive action this week on immigration, I think it would be very important to discuss the messaging of this. It is a little weird because he took a very bold step by essentially shutting down the border almost entirely, especially for the out-of-control asylum claims that were being made.
Jennifer Palmieri: Also to remind people, that was like two weeks ago, right.
Claire McCaskill: Right. So, in many ways, he was seen as doing something bold and in many ways courageous because he knew there would be significant blowback from some parts, particularly of our party and leadership in the Latino community. This is interesting what he did, though. So this is not about anybody who came across the border during the Biden administration.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: This has nothing to do with anyone who stepped across the border while Joe Biden was president. This is for people who have been here for over 10 years, who are married and many instances have children that both their spouses and their children are United States citizens.
Jennifer Palmieri: And allows them to apply for permanent residence without leaving the country. And, you know, we’re talking about people’s lives here. So I’m very careful when we discuss politics in relation to, —
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: — I mean, has a huge impact on people’s lives. But the concern is that Trump could take this action, which he did when he at his rally in Wisconsin the other day, he did talk about Biden’s doing blanket amnesty. Now, of course, there’s never any cohesive thought communicated by this guy. So he didn’t necessarily tie it to this action.
But I suspect that Trump and Republicans, and particularly at the debate, will say you’re doing some kind of blanket amnesty. But I think the background on this, first of all, is that DACA happens. That is allowing DREAMers, people who are brought here by their parents as children, to stay in the country, go to school, work.
That happened in 2012, in June of 2012. And that really put Obama’s reelection campaign on a course to win. And the politics on this have changed a lot. And so the politics of this can be dicey. But 500,000 people who right now live under the threat of deportation and have been in this country for 10 years and are married to a U.S. citizen, may have children who are U.S. citizens here, they are going to be able to go to sleep not worrying about being deported.
Five hundred thousand people that it impacts directly, that affects millions of people. Like, at least, I think it’d be conservative to say two and a half million people are going to feel better because with this very tangible real thing that’s going to let their friend or family member be able to live in this country without fear of being deported. That’s a meaningful action that I think will be meaningful for Hispanic voters.
But as you said, the way to talk about it, I think, is leaning in on the 10 years, Congress in action, this is why it’s necessary to do this. But like, I got to say, I was kind of surprised they did it before the debate, but the White House, I know, really feels like the public is on their side with this, that there’s bipartisan support for it, in addition to being the right thing to do.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, if you look at what he’s done, wrapping this up, he really is mirroring what the legislation was. The legislation that was negotiated in a bipartisan way, that they got across the finish line in terms of everybody agreeing, and then Trump pulled the rug out from under it because he didn’t want Biden to have a win on this topic.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: So they’ve basically tightened up asylum and they have done, you know, and here’s the other thing, Jen, I got to say about this, even though it may be a little sticky in terms of the political messaging, it reassures me on an internal basis that this president wants to do the right thing to deal with the political consequences.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yes.
Claire McCaskill: And that ought to make everybody feel good about Joe Biden, so.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Particularly when it comes to families, you know?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah, absolutely.
Jennifer Palmieri: I feel like he’s keeping families together. I feel like that’s what you’ll hear Biden say at the debate, right?
Claire McCaskill: Yeah.
Jennifer Palmieri: Like, I’m keeping families together, you’re separating families. I had a solution. You blocked it. It’s a strong case.
Claire McCaskill: Right.
Jennifer Palmieri: Okay.
Claire McCaskill: So the Republicans are back to fear mongering. Well, I guess they never left fear mongering.
Jennifer Palmieri: No, they never left.
Claire McCaskill: They use anecdotal horrific crimes that occur in this country every single day and have for as long as we’ve been walking the planet, Jen.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, totally.
Claire McCaskill: And they take those individual crimes and then they want to somehow convince everyone that means all crime is out of control. So, when Trump said Milwaukee was horrible, first of all, bizarre. But secondly, he’s trying to back it up now and say, oh, I didn’t mean that. I meant fraud, voter fraud and I meant that it’s just crime. Here’s the deal.
Crime is down in Milwaukee, and it’s not just the FBI stats. Everybody says, oh, well, the FBI is not reporting all the information because we don’t trust the FBI.
When somebody gets murdered, I can assure you as someone who got those calls when someone was murdered in Kansas City when I was a prosecutor —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: — it’s not like that’s a statistic you can bury. There’s a dead body. And of course, those statistics are accurate. And it shows that, in fact, gun violence is down.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, there’s a few things to unpack here. It’s down in Milwaukee. The Center for American Progress, one of my former places of employ, has a good report on this. Philadelphia experienced its biggest drop in gun violence among major U.S. cities. That’s a “Time” magazine headline.
But what CAP found is that in addition to Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Milwaukee and Columbus, Ohio, saw at least 10 fewer victimizations per 100,000 residents year to date. And general gun homicides are down in the U.S. by 13.1 percent. And gun violence victimizations are down by 12.5 percent compared to 2023. And part of this was there was a pandemic spike, which I believe was Donald Trump’s administration.
And we’ll link to the CAP analysis in our show notes. You know, CAP looked into why this is happening. Cities that are seeing the greatest public safety gains, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston, committed to gun violence reduction strategies coordinated by their local offices of violence prevention and made investments in more holistic and long-term approaches to improving public safety.
So if I were in the room on this, Biden needs to make sure people understand that crime is going down. The murder rate is going down, but you have to be careful about it, you know, because you don’t want to be so disconnected from where people’s brains are right now. It’s the same way as with the economy, right? Like if you tell everybody the economy is great, you should feel better and they don’t feel better and you’re not giving some additional context that lets them go on the journey with you to why I feel terrible, but the economy is actually good.
You need to do that with crime too. Like I think you need to say there had been increases in crime that started around the time of the pandemic. It has come down now and our cities are safer. But I think you really need to be pushing this notion that it is getting better because I think what Trump is trying to do is give people a sense of a country that’s out of control. The economy is out of control. Crime is out of control. Immigration is out of control.
And Biden needs to like the overall message is like, we got a lot done. We’re making progress. There’s more to do, but believe that there’s a plan that’s working.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And if I were in the room, I would bet a dollar to donuts that the program that is working in Philadelphia, and by the way, that’s a big one to highlight because Pennsylvania —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — is such an important state.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: The strategies that are being employed, knowing how this happens, I bet you huge money that there’s federal money involved and he needs to tie —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, cops money (inaudible).
Claire McCaskill: — the increase in funding the Biden administration championed and got across the finish line for law enforcement. It is really important that Biden talk about the record amount of support that his administration has given law enforcement. And it is allowing these urban centers to employ strategies with extra resources that are now translating into lower levels of violence. And I hope that’s one of the things that he covers in the debate. Speaking of the debate —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: — if you were in the room —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — for debate prep, let’s go, right? What do you say?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. This is my —
Claire McCaskill: I’m kind of excited.
Jennifer Palmieri: I’m totally excited because if I’m not directly responsible for a debate, I am excited to watch them and talk about them. When I worked for Hillary in the first debate we did, which was at Hofstra in September of 2015, I realized that after the first 15 minutes, which in that debate went fine, like Trump didn’t quite know what he was doing and Hillary did well and there weren’t any like weird dramatics like there were in the next debate.
This debate, I realized after 15 minutes, like it was all going well and I was like, my head was just pounding and I realized I had not taken a breath. So, you know, the debates are Democrats friends because Democrats live in the space of facts and Trump does not. And this is the one time where you can hold him to account, not that he will accept what you’re saying is true, but, you know, the moderators are going to, in this case, it’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash from CNN, who are both really great, will hold him into account, but more of just the public can see and they can make their own judgments about who’s telling the truth there.
But it also gives you the opportunity to set the stage ahead of time, which again, like the hardest thing for Biden is to break through. So ahead of time, you can say, okay, here’s the three things we want to accomplish in this debate. You’re going to see the president make the argument on why the economy is better under him than Trump.
You’re going to see the president make the argument why Trump owns all of these Trump abortions ban. And you’re going to see the president make the argument as to why chaos of the border is Donald Trump’s fault. And then you’re having the opportunity to drive message ahead of the debate. You’re setting the table for that. You have the debate itself, and then you’re able to drive those messages coming out of it.
So you’re not just waiting for the debate to frame the choice for the fall. The press is going to let you frame the choice now. That’s different than managing expectations about who’s going to perform better. I’m just saying what messages he’s going to drive.
Claire McCaskill: And I agree with you on messaging. I see no problem previewing the most important messages.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: But this debate is a little different. This debate is a little different than any other presidential debate in our lifetime because how they perform may be more important than what they say. And I think that Trump is screwed in one major way. He has spent the last six months convincing everybody in America that Joe Biden can’t walk or talk, that Joe Biden is incapable of putting together a thought. So he has set the expectations so low for Joe Biden’s actual performance.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, it’s gotten to the point where he’s making up that Joe Biden is taking drugs for God’s sake. I mean, does he know Joe Biden?
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, it is like so ludicrous. If you know Joe Biden, you know how stupid it is —
Jennifer Palmieri: He doesn’t even drink. He doesn’t even drink. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: I mean, you talk about a straight arrow, Joe. This is a guy who would never even counter the word adultery, which, by the way, Donald Trump has kind of specialized in for most of his adult life, so —
Jennifer Palmieri: A lot of experience.
Claire McCaskill: Here’s the thing. Joe Biden needs to talk about the economy roaring. But Joe Biden needs to roar. Joe Biden —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — needs to be the State of the Union Joe Biden.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: And you and I have talked about this. He can be a junkyard dog. He can be a schoolyard bully.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: He can say, shut up, man. That’s the most memorable line of his debates in 2020, right? Just shut up, man.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah. I got it on a T-shirt.
Claire McCaskill: Exactly. He needs to do that. You know, can you say a sentence without lying, Donald Trump? Can you actually form a thought that is actually truthful? I think he’s got to do that. I think he’s got to show —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: — a real capability of going toe to toe with this guy on his turf. Now, that is not typically presidential and that’s not typically what you would advise a presidential candidate to do.
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Claire McCaskill: But we are in a different time now. And this is all about whether people watching this debate and don’t kid yourself, this is going to be a massive audience. A lot of them are going to be tuning in to see Joe Biden fall flat on his face.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Claire McCaskill: So it really could be a turning point for this election. I think it’s why everyone in the Biden camp is anxious about it. I think they’re probably just as anxious in the Trump camp because you never know what’s going to come out of that idiot’s mouth.
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah, yeah.
Claire McCaskill: So it’s going to be really for people who like politics, this is one of the biggest Super Bowls in history.
Jennifer Palmieri: You know, there’s a lot of hyperbole gets thrown around in political analysis, but I can’t imagine a presidential debate where there was more on the line than this one. I mean, in ‘20, they mattered a lot in ‘20, but Biden was ahead. It was different. There wasn’t this huge question about his age, the way that it overhangs everything now.
And I want to say one more thing about Biden responding to Trump. The thing that’s great about Biden versus Trump is they are of the same generation for sure. And Joe Biden, as scrappy Scranton Joe, grew up really hating people like Donald Trump his whole life. He grew up as a blue collar kid who didn’t have a lot of respect for people who come from Park Avenue and didn’t earn what they have.
And so he’s not intimidated by Trump the way other politicians may be. He does not respect him. He does not scare him. And he’s good with the asides. Like you said before, like, well, you just shut up, man, or you’re just lying again or whatever it is. And I know, you know, they’re taking prep seriously. He and his team are going down to Camp David to do all that. But there’s just some kind of instincts in Biden that I think are good here.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And prep is important because we all remember if Barack Obama took prep for granted on his first debate and had a difficult time with Mitt Romney at debate number one.
Jennifer Palmieri: Let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, I’m excited to bring Laborers Union General President Brent Booker on the show. One of the things I do is work for the Laborers Union. They’re doing really great work. And he’s going to come in to talk about what issues are important to LIUNA’s members and how they see this fall’s contest. Back with Brent in a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. If you’ve ever wondered how that local bridge got repaired, and I will invoke a particular big project that people will probably remember, which is last summer in Philadelphia, part of I-95 collapsed. The assessments from Governor Shapiro and the federal government at the time was that it would take months to repair. And instead, it was repaired in 12 days. That work was brought to you by LIUNA, the Laborers International Union of North America.
That was part of that project. You see some pretty famous TikTok’s from that particular event. But it’s not just that. It’s how new battery factories come to be built, putting up wind turbine engines. LIUNA members are the members that build our infrastructure and, you know, make our lives easier every day and America a little more economic competitive.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. So how do all these folks who are doing this important work feel about the state of our country right now? Our economy, our sitting president. To give us some insight, Brent Booker joins us now. He is the general president of the Laborers International Union of North America. He’s a third generation member of Laborers Local 795 in New Albany, Indiana, and the son and grandson of Laborers Leaders, LIUNA.
I always call them the Laborers. And he has previously served for 10 years as secretary treasurer of North America Building Trades Unions. Welcome, Brent. We are really pleased to have you with us today and are anxious to get into the reality of the political situation within your particular labor union right now. First of all, how big are you? Let’s, like, give everybody perspective on how many people are out there working at a good union job, making sure that our infrastructure and many other projects are built right.
Brent Booker: So, I am proud to represent 530,000 men and women in the United States and Canada, building infrastructure in both of our countries. And people just want to go to work every day, and I’m lucky to be able to represent them.
Claire McCaskill: So tell me how they’re feeling right now. Are you confident they’re all going to vote? And what do you think? You know, let’s be candid here, Brent. It has been —
Jennifer Palmieri: Claire’s candid.
Claire McCaskill: I’m candid. You know, one of the challenges within the labor movement once Trump arrived on the scene was the rank and file versus leadership. Leadership taking a cold eye towards who was going to be best for their members, who was going to produce actual projects and work for their members, who was going to respect labor unions and what they represent in America.
But the rank and file, a lot of them kind of loved the way Trump talked and the way he acted and got caught up in some of the cultural stuff. So tell us how you feel about that right now and whether this is something that should be keeping the Biden campaign up at night.
Brent Booker: Candidly, I worry about it and it keeps me up at night. And that’s just because we have to get out and talk to our membership. And we have, for the first time in a long time, the ability to compare the record of two presidents in the last eight years who each had the opportunity to woo our members, to put policies together, to enact legislation that would either benefit our membership or harm our membership.
And when you look at that contrast of what Donald Trump and his administration did for four years compared to what Joe Biden and his administration has done for four years, there’s no comparison. One talked about infrastructure, one did it. One talked about bringing back manufacturing jobs, one did it. One talked about, you know, the rights of workers going to work.
And we met with President Trump, you know, at the beginning of his presidency and said, this is what’s important to you. This is what matters to our members. This is how you’ll get our members to vote for you. And it was lip service. He listened to us. He shook his head in the meeting. He said, yes, everybody loves me. Your members love me. I’m going to do all of that.
And after four years, there was no infrastructure. There was no manufacturing jobs brought back under Trump’s leadership. But under Joe Biden, there has been. And for us, I mean, what keeps me up awake at night is to make sure our members know that story. And for us, we have to go tell them that story. Our membership is like the American people. There’s Republicans, there’s Democrats and there’s independents, but they’re also persuadable.
And when you tell them the facts of how they got their paycheck and what Joe Biden has done for them compared to what Donald Trump has done for them, I sleep a little bit better at night knowing that there is a real difference and a contrast. And when our members know those differences, they go out, they vote and they vote for their union. They vote with their paychecks. They vote for the economy.
Jennifer Palmieri: So before you came on, I explained to people that I work with you all and I love it so much because, first of all, the laborers are just amazing. It’s just like some of the greatest people in the country that choose to do this kind of work. And I think that the program you all have put together is, you know, authentic and very sophisticated. And I know that sort of the best communication is member to member.
But can you talk to some about you all also have an incredible handbook for your members about why they should be for Biden, if they’re trying to persuade their fellow members to be for Biden, having all the stats and arguments that they need. But it’s not as if you’re trying to say to people, you have to agree with Biden on everything, right? Like roleplay a conversation you would have with a fellow laborer who had supported Trump in the past and to convince them to vote for Biden this time.
Brent Booker: Right. And we have what we call our election kit and we’ve got a tool kit. It’s an election tool kit that has anything from, you know, PowerPoint presentations that a business manager, a leader can show to their membership meeting to literally questions and answers that we can empower a member when they’re out on a job site and they see somebody wearing a MAGA sticker on their hard hat or a Donald Trump sticker on their hard hat to go up there and have that conversation with them.
Jennifer Palmieri: Which is a scary and uncomfortable thing to do.
Brent Booker: It is. And look, I’m uncomfortable doing it. I go out on job sites and you have to get uncomfortable to have these honest conversations. And it’s easier to have an honest conversation when you know them. So we’re encouraging our leadership to get out into the field, get out on the job site. We’re encouraging our members who are passionate about their job, about their career to talk to other members.
And look, they’ll bring up immigration and say, what’s Joe Biden done for immigration? And then we have the facts that, you know, Joe Biden’s done executive orders, strengthening our border, giving more money to the border security, and is trying to shore up the border rather than have it as a talking point to go win an election. They talk about groceries and real life issues, right, and how much their gas costs and how much their grocery costs.
But then we can empower them and say, well, you got a six percent raise last year because of your union and because of the economy and because of an infrastructure bill coming, the contractors know that they’ve got work for the next decade, so they don’t have to worry about their backlog of work. So, we have that role playing or we have those talking points. And look, we also know that there’s some members we’re never going to convince and we’re not going to waste our time of trying to convince them to do something that we know they’re never going to do.
So, hey, they’re going to be where they’re at. I think that’s a small portion. There’s a lot that are going to vote for the Democratic candidate no matter what. But what we’re really trying to focus on is those persuadables, those independents, those moderates, and give them information that is just the facts. Our membership likes hearing from their union and they just want the facts from us, so we give them the facts. I feel pretty confident that a majority of our members are going to then cast a vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Claire McCaskill: You know, it’s interesting because I do think there’s an issue of comfort about who you’re surrounded by. I see it in rural communities all the time. People say to me, you know, I’m for Joe Biden, but I can’t really talk about it in the small town I live in because everybody there is so foot forward Trump. So I think what you’re doing on the work site is really important because the more those persuadables see other people around them that are absolutely for Joe Biden for all the right reasons, I think it makes a big difference.
I’m curious about this, though, Brent. I notice when Trump does things like when he bragged about not paying contractors. You know, when I heard him say that, I heard rank and file members all over the country going, what? He’s not going to pay the contractors because there may have been a technical issue because of extreme heat. The men and women who are out there sweating, trying to prepare that site and make it work for him, and he’s just not going to pay them? Do your members hear that? Do they know what an ass this guy has been about paying people who do the hardest work for him throughout his business career?
Brent Booker: That’s, again, the advantage of having someone with his record. He has made a career out of not paying his contractors, whether it was building his casinos in Atlantic City, his high rises where he would slap his name on it in New York City. Anywhere where he has his name on a building, you can go interview a contractor or worker who got stiffed by Donald Trump and didn’t pay them. And he says, you got to go get an attorney. And I got better attorneys. I can afford more attorneys than you. So we just have to tell that story.
And look, Donald Trump doesn’t respect our membership. You saw when he points out to the crowd and says, I don’t like you. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. He’s showing us who he is. We’ve got to believe him. And we’ve got to as a labor organization, as a labor union, we just got to make sure our membership sees that and do it on social media, do it on our video series, do it on the job site and have other laborers telling other laborers, hey, don’t get conned by this guy. He’s made a career out of conning people and he’s making a career out of conning the American public right now.
Claire McCaskill: You know, I have fond memories of many crowded union halls with members there listening to me give my pitch and asking me questions and then me waiting outside for the vote. I’m nervous about whether or not they were going to go for this young woman who, frankly, in many of those rooms, there weren’t a lot of them like me. There weren’t a lot of women. How have things changed over the last 40 years in terms of labor unions and how they operate and how they serve their members? What does it look like from where you sit today versus what it might have been for your father or grandfather?
Brent Booker: Well, I was just going to answer it the way you just ended the question. You know, it’s not my grandfather’s union. It’s not my father’s union. And we’ve evolved. You have to. Our organization has been around 121 years. If we operated the same today as we did 121 years ago, we’d be extinct like any business in this country. We are modernizing everything that we do, even from a labor relations standpoint.
When I first got in this career in the early 2000s, the way we talk to the owner community, the way we talk to the contractor, the community, the way we talk to the political community has evolved and has gotten better. And we realize today it’s about partnerships that carry us forward, whether it’s a contractor, whether it’s an owner, whether it’s a politician running for office. If we partner with them, we’re going to have a good chance of having some success together.
Claire McCaskill: We’re going to take a quick pause here. But when we’re back, more with Labor’s Union General President Brent Booker. Back in a moment.
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Jennifer Palmieri: Welcome back. We’ve been speaking with Brent Booker, the Labor’s Union General President, about what issues are front and center for his members. So, Brent, it feels like this is a moment where labor unions are more popular now than they have ever been, maybe ever, at least in the last 60 years or so.
You can see there’s a hunger in the American public for workers to have rights, do better, be better supported. And I know you’re now the head of the Labor’s. Prior to that, you were the secretary treasurer, which is sort of like in layman’s speak, the number two person at the Building Trades Union, which is sort of the amalgam of all of the trades involved in construction and building. I’m looking for Brent for confirmation that I described all of that correctly.
Brent Booker: You got it right. You got it right.
Jennifer Palmieri: And you are negotiating for contracts as part of that. A big one was the Vogel plant in Georgia. This is a nuclear power plant that had had a lot of struggles, way over budget, took a very long time to complete. But sort of midway, you all negotiated a contract to get that to be skilled union workforce. And that feels like as with so much clean energy development happening, so much energy development happening in general, all the infrastructure, all the projects that are going to come online because of Biden, how that is working and why that’s important you we are able to negotiate these big contracts and ultimately benefiting the taxpayer.
Brent Booker: Right. I mean, in plant Vogel, unit four just came online. I was down there a couple of weeks ago with the celebration with the Secretary of Energy, the leadership of Southern Company and Bechtel and the contractor community that built it. And for the next 80 years, we’re going to have clean power in Georgia. Vogel was two new units, unit three and unit four, each units of 12 to 1500 megawatts of clean power that is going to be licensed and generating power for the next 80 years.
And it took a little bit longer than it should have. And that was engineering. That was design. That was a pandemic. That was all kinds of things. But at the end of the day, the benefactor of that was the men and women we represent. And they went to work every day and they paid countless pension credits, health and welfare benefits. So when their families got sick, they were able to go to the hospital, not put that back on the taxpayer because their union had their health benefit and they were able to go there.
The benefits, you know, when you look at all of the secondary market that comes from clean energy, all of these data centers, big warehouses —
Jennifer Palmieri: Yeah.
Brent Booker: — these big data companies that want clean energy, nuclear is a great way to go. And it’s business development in the state of Georgia because of that. And that’s just one example, you know, where we were able to sit down, negotiate and see the bigger picture as to what was the benefit of partnering with organized labor, with the building trades, with LIUNA. And then creating, you know, in that case, thousands of jobs, middle class jobs to benefit the overall community, the state of Georgia, the Southeast United States, and at the same time decarbonizing, you know, our footprint for the energy that’s needed down there.
Jennifer Palmieri: It really struck me. Growing up, I lived mostly in the South, not at a time where labor did not have a big presence. And you see, it’s not just that there’s so much being built in America, but it’s also because Biden has put in apprenticeship requirements and some of the clean energy construction money that’s available through the IRA, that labor union growth could really explode.
And I know even in Alabama, Alabama Power has said, if they’re building something in Alabama, they’re going to do it with the laborers because they know that that is going to get the job done better. But it is, I mean, people should understand, I think it’s not just that there’s more support for unions on the cusp because of all these federal investments, growth in places you wouldn’t expect, like the southeastern part of the United States.
But I want to ask you one more political question. Your union members really trust you. That is a big deal, right? And so I want to have you talk about how you all have preserved that trust. I know that, for example, the building trades, the sort of amalgam of all of these unions has not, for almost 20 years, I think, put a coordinated effort to encourage all of their unions members to vote for Biden, to vote for a Democrat. Haven’t done that before because I hadn’t felt you had as good of an argument this time around.
But preserving that trust, why is that important? And do you feel like you can just tell people Biden did this for you and because of that, you need to continue to support him? Or do you need to say what Trump failed to do or what Trump would take away?
Brent Booker: Well, the first part of that question is about trust, right. And every poll we do, we ask those questions about, do you trust your union? Do you like your union? And do you want to hear from your union? And that polls for us almost 80 percent. They trust their union. They want to hear from their union.
Jennifer Palmieri: That’s bonkers high for right now. Any institution bid 80 percent, yeah.
Brent Booker: I mean, Congress is at, what, 7 percent. So I’ll take —
Jennifer Palmieri: Right.
Brent Booker: — I’ll take my 80 percent, right. And it’s because we just tell them the truth and that’s all they want. You know, you got to call a ball a ball and a strike a strike and you got to go in and look, we did that in 2016 with Trump. We got a lot of flak from the left in early 2016 when I think the first or second day Trump was in the White House, he invited building trades leaders into the Oval Office. We heard him out. We’ll work with anybody who’s going to give us a fair shot. And we thought that Donald Trump was that guy. And then we had four years of him. We saw how it ended. He was never that guy. He wanted a photo op. He wanted a camera shoot. He wanted to bullshit our members. And he did. And we got to just call him out on it now.
And even our members who say they will vote for Donald Trump still want to hear from their union about politics. And the way we keep that is just being honest with them. Tell them when they got that infrastructure job, that was passed by Joe Biden, that broadband job that they’re working on, that wind farm, that solar plant, because you’re working on that project was because of the IRA or the infrastructure bill or simply because of Joe Biden, you got your paycheck.
And preserving that trust is important as a labor leader, because we got to make sure that we’re in contact with our membership and hear from them and have two way dialogue and two way communication. But we also need to just tell them the truth and tell them the facts. So, as the summer evolves is going to do contrasting the two candidates. And I can tell them how great Joe Biden is, but I can also tell how bad Donald Trump was.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. And Brent, you know, I think it’s important to point out that you have a hard job in that you became president of the laborers after somebody was there for 23 years. I mean, Terry O’Sullivan was no one to screw around with. Terry O’Sullivan was willing to say and do things that were pretty bold within the labor movement. I won’t go through all the history, but I’m sure you could recite it with much more accurateness than I can. So you came in new and there’s a lot of new labor leaders out there.
Before we let you go, I want to have you talk about down ballot, because I’m seeing, for example, Josh Hawley, who is anti-union and just ridiculous. He showed up on a picket line here in Missouri. And, you know, he hardly ever shows up in Missouri, but he showed up on a picket line one day.
And I see unions in my state going with Republicans almost because they feel like they don’t have another choice, even though those same people are going to vote against their interests every time, whether it’s a PLA or whether it’s issues about organizing or the National Labor Relations Board and the makeup of that.
How strong are the laborers this cycle in working down ballot? And do you feel like you are forced to swallow some Republican endorsements just because of what the reality is in some red states where you guys have members?
Brent Booker: Well, I mean, the short answer is we’re going to endorse anybody who has the backs of our membership is going to create jobs. I don’t care if they have an I, a D or an R behind their name. Historically, there’s a whole lot of more D’s than there are R’s who have voted in the best interest of us and our membership. When you look at the bipartisan infrastructure bill, 13 Republicans, we wouldn’t have had that if we didn’t have 13 Republicans in the House vote for that. So we obviously want to support those who support working families.
And down ballot, that’s, look, the infrastructure bill doesn’t happen unless Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House and Chuck Schumer is the leader of the Senate and Joe Biden is the president. So down ballots just as important. And I think we’d be doing a disservice to our membership and our organization if we endorse someone just because we didn’t have another option on the other side. We’ve got to endorse people and we’ve got to have our voices and our votes count for people who have us and our members backs. And that’s it and that’s all.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thank you so much.
Claire McCaskill: Yeah. Brent, thanks so much you taking the time to do this. It’s important we hear from union members and that’s what you are. Even though you may have president behind your name, at the end of the day, you’re a union member. You are the general president of Labor’s International Union of North America, proudly representing over 500,00 hard workers in this country that deserve our support. Thank you for being with us today and thank you for all your doing.
Brent Booker: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate your all’s time. Thank you.
Claire McCaskill: Brent Booker is the general president of Labor’s International Union of North America. He’s a third generation member of Labor’s Local 795 in New Albany, Indiana, and the son and grandson of LIUNA leaders. Thanks again for joining us today, Brent.
Jennifer Palmieri: Thanks so much for listening. If you have a question for us, you can send it to howtowinquestions@nbcuni.com or you can leave us a voicemail at 646-974-4194 and we might answer it on the pod. And a reminder to listeners, we’ll be releasing our next episode on Friday instead of our usual Thursday so we can give you some post-debate takeaways.
Claire McCaskill: This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina. Janmaris Perez is our associate producer. Catherine Anderson is our audio engineer. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC.
Jennifer Palmieri: Search for “How To Win 2024” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.