Carrier Union Leader Says Trump 'Lied His Ass Off' About Saving Jobs, Probably While Head Still Up There

Transcript: Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie

Well here's a heck of a surprise:  the leader of the union representing workers at the Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana where Donald Trump bragged about his wonderful job-saving deal with the company says that he'd been hoping Trump would explain how the deal was supposed to be any good, since hundreds of manufacturing jobs were still going to Mexico. Instead, Trump claimed he and Mike Pence had "saved" 1,100 jobs, and Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers local 1999 (but not the director of all those great Bugs Bunny cartoons) was not impressed, not one bit:

“But he got up there,” Jones said Tuesday, “and, for whatever reason, lied his a-- off.”

Jones is especially angry that 550 of the workers represented by his union will lose their jobs; the union wasn't even consulted during the negotiations between Pence and Carrier.

As we noted last week, the real number of jobs "saved" by the millions of dollars in incentives to Carrier -- not by tough tariffs and other punishments Trump had promised during the campaign -- was probably more like 800, while over a thousand jobs were still going to be outsourced. Now, the Washington Post confirms Trump inflated the numbers, and included as jobs "saved" some 350 positions in research and development that were never endangered -- which should sound awfully familiar, too.

Another 80 jobs, which Trump seemed to include in his figure, were non-union clerical and supervisory positions. (A Carrier spokesperson confirmed that 800 factory jobs once earmarked for Mexico are staying.) And now the president-elect was applauding the company and giving it millions of dollars in tax breaks, even as hundreds of Indianapolis workers prepared to be laid off.

“Trump and Pence, they pulled a dog and pony show on the numbers,” said Jones, who voted for Hillary Clinton but called her "the better of two evils." “I almost threw up in my mouth.”

So congratulations, Mr. Trump, you're already making people sick with your "winning."

The WaPo story also details an adorable little screwup during Trump's big speech; Trump had intended to thank the Carrier worker whose appearance on TV after the election had supposedly inspired his decision to intervene in Carrier's planned move to Mexico, and a corporate honcho had guided T.J. Bray, the only Carrier worker who fit that description, to a seat in the front row so Trump could point him out. When Trump got to that part of the speech, he asked if the person who he was talking about was in the audience. That was apparently where Trump was supposed to praise Mr. Bray, but things went off-script:

A woman yelled that her son was, and Trump began to compliment that son, though he hadn't spoken in the television news segment. (Bray said that a United Technologies spokesperson later told him Trump meant to single him out.)

It's probably just as well -- the deal was bogus and led to at least as many jobs going to Mexico as staying in the U.S., so Bray may ultimately be happy his name won't be linked to it. The Post notes that Bray politely clapped anyway, for the jobs that were staying.

[ WaPo / WTHR ]