Thursday, December 29, 2016

Donald Trump Claims Credit For New Sprint Jobs Announced Weeks Before Election

President-elect Donald Trump
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump sought to take credit for "bringing jobs back to America" regarding the telecom company Sprint.

“Because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope. I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they’re going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States.”

"I just spoke with the head person, he said because of me they’re doing 5,000 jobs in this country.”

One small problem with that: Sprint announced the jobs investment weeks before Trump became president-elect.

Via ThinkProgress:

Sprint’s parent company, SoftBank, said in October that it would partner with a Saudi sovereign wealth fund to invest about $100 billion in the tech sector. On December 6, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told Trump the company would use some of these funds to bring 50,000 jobs to the United States. Trump promptly announced as much on Twitter.

SoftBank confirmed to the tech news site Engadget that the 5,000 jobs Trump took credit for on Wednesday are “part of the 50,000 jobs that Masa previously announced.” The company added that the 50,000 jobs “will be a combination of newly created jobs and bringing some existing jobs back to the U.S.”

A big part of this story today is that many major news outlets just ran with headlines giving Trump the credit, when clearly he had nothing to do with the deal.

(via CNN)

(via USA Today)

(via Washington Post)

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