The New American Revolution by Kayleigh McEnany

Author:Kayleigh McEnany
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions

When the callous corporate official announced to a room full of Carrier workers that they were losing their jobs, he was likely unaware of the young woman filming just beyond the stage. And the young woman filming was admittedly unaware of the momentous reaction her video would provoke. In just one night three million people viewed that video, taken from the phone of a Carrier employee and posted on YouTube. Brian can be heard screaming his terse “F***ing sellouts!”

“I still can’t watch the video,” T.J. told me during our first conversation. “I have to turn away.” The video brings back the stomach-dropping memory of betrayal. The curt announcement contrasted starkly with the audible reaction of distraught workers. America took notice.

“It seemed like every channel you turned on, that video was on there,” Brian remembered. It was one of the few news stories that broke through the near-constant coverage of the presidential primaries.

Shortly after the video went viral, then-candidate Donald Trump tweeted out a still shot of the video and wrote, “I am the only one who can fix this. Very sad. Will not happen under my watch!”3 During the CBS Republican presidential debate that evening, Trump mentioned the Carrier workers. Describing the video, he vividly recounted the scene to a watching nation, “They’re laid off. They were crying . . . it was a very sad situation . . . I’m going to tell them right now, I am going to get consensus from Congress and we’re going to tax you when those air conditioners come.”4 Trump was the only Republican candidate in that debate to mention the Carrier workers, who would become a constant line of reference for him on the campaign trail. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders highlighted the plight of the Carrier workers, joining them at a rally at the Indiana statehouse.5

I asked T.J. and Brian how union members felt about Trump, Sanders, and Clinton during the primaries. “Nobody was for Clinton,” T.J. instantly replied.

“It was NAFTA, Benghazi,” explained Brian. “The whole whitewashing of her servers.”

“It was trust,” added T.J.

“And not to mention the list of people that seem to die around the Clintons,” Brian replied with a sarcastic chuckle.

“[S]he was for TPP [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] and then she was running for president—oh, now she’s against TPP!” T.J. quipped, then returning to a serious demeanor, “So I think a lot of people had no trust in her . . . I don’t know one big Clinton person last year at all.”

“I really didn’t,” Brian confirmed.

T.J.’s and Brian’s political leanings in 2016 are emblematic of the political divisions within Carrier and among unions nationwide. T.J. supported Bernie Sanders because he wasn’t a “corporate candidate” like Hillary, propped up by the DNC, while Brian supported Trump because of an article he read years ago. In the article Trump mentioned that one of the things that made him successful was not being afraid to let someone go who was incapable of doing the job. “I see that around me every day.

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