Donald Trump, pulling a very familiar trick, boasted this morning on Twitter that Fiat-Chrysler “just announced plans to invest $1 billion in Michigan and Ohio plants, adding 2,000 jobs.” In a follow-up tweet, the president-elect thanked the company.Trump, however, didn’t have anything to do with the investment he seems eager to take credit for.
FCA, the U.S. arm of automaker Fiat-Chrysler, announced on Sunday that it would invest a total $1 billion in plants in Michigan and Ohio, which will add 2,000 new jobs in the United States.The announcement, in what the company said was the second phase of a plan it first made public a year ago, came days after Ford decided to scrap a plan to build a facility in Mexico, instead opting to invest in a plant in Michigan. Ford’s CEO cited demand, rather than the policies of President-elect Donald Trump.
If it seems as if this is becoming a daily occurrence, with Trump celebrating new jobs as if he had something to do with them, you’re not far off.As we discussed last week, the pattern started shortly after Election Day, when Trump proudly announced that Ford, as a result of the president-elect’s awesomeness, had agreed to keep a Lincoln SUV plant in Kentucky. What he neglected to mention was that Ford hadn’t intended to close the Kentucky plant, and it wasn’t long before Trump’s boasts were discredited.Soon after, Trump’s claims about the jobs he saved at Carrier turned out to be untrue. His claims about jobs at Softbank were equally wrong. Trump supporters eagerly credited the president-elect for IBM’s plan to expand its workforce, despite the fact that the company’s hiring announcement was initially made in May.Two weeks ago, Trump made bold claims about new jobs from Sprint – the president-elect credited “what is happening and the spirit and the hope” surrounding his upcoming presidency – which were wildly wrong. Last week, his boasts about Ford weren’t true, either.It’s obviously unseemly for Trump to keep patting himself on the back for developments he has nothing to do with, but the president-elect is also taking a risk of sorts: if Trump believes every positive economic development is directly tied to him, what exactly does he intend to do in the event of an economic downturn?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."