It's already begun. Donald Trump hasn't even won a single primary yet, and already America's companies are moving their factories out of Mexico and back into the United States. According, anyway, to
Random Person On Twitter, linking to Article from a Website. But that person mentioned Donald Trump by name so Donald Trump appeared, as if by magic, to
claim victory.
There is a problem with this. There are several, actually, but we'll stick to the biggies. The first is that the news story he happily retweeted, “Trump successfully pressures Ford to move Mexican plant to Ohio,” is—as we say in the punditin' business—seriously flawed, possibly to the point of trolling.
The basis for its article was a CNN article from this August noting that Ford was shifting production of some of its pickup trucks from Mexico to Ohio.
Trump launched his campaign on June 16. That would leave just 8 weeks for Ford to absorb Trump’s message, decide to shift production from Mexico to Ohio and then actually retool and start production of trucks.
Not since World War II has an automotive company mounted such an effort. Presuming Ford saw the writing on the wall the very day Donald Trump gave his announcement speech grumbling about immigrant drug dealers and rapists, the board immediately ordering one of their Mexico-based plants to quickly relocate to Ohio so that brand new candidate Donald Trump would not devastate them with his devastating powers, retooling an Ohio plant to build a new product in only eight weeks is
something. Or would be,
if it wasn't complete hokum.
Read on for more hilarity.
Actually, the decision dates back to 2011 when John Kasich — a rival of Trump for the GOP nomination — awarded a tax incentive to Ford to keep the plant open:
Ah. So the move was not in the works for eight weeks, but for four years, and the Republican pol responsible for the Ohio plant being retooled to build trucks is not Donald Trump, gifted though he may be with his powers of Yelling At People, but Gov. John Kasich, gifted with the far more commonplace Republican power of Corporate Tax Cuts. Or, alternatively, Donald Trump's Yelling At People has become so powerful that his Yelling At People is now altering the fabric of time, causing his opponents to change their behavior four full years before the Yelling At People took place.
That brings us to problem number two: How is it that Donald Trump, super-genius and so on, is now convinced he did this thing that he could not possibly have done presuming his hairdo is not a Tardis, a thing if anything can be credited to one of his direct rivals? The site he is crediting does not exactly ooze credibility, with its byline the most read political blog in United States [sic], though it does deliver some real scoops.
Other headlines on the site Monday included: "Troy, NY man’s 'local' pumpkin filled with toxic Tropical spiders,"
Stop right there: I don't want to know anything else. You had me at
toxic Tropical spiders, and there's nowhere to go from there.
I think we all know how this came about. Every morning, and every evening and afternoon besides, Donald Trump obsessively scrolls through his Twitter mentions looking for praise of Donald Trump. He found a tweet claiming that Donald Trump managed to convince Ford Motor Co. to relocate from Mexico to Ohio. While this is not something he remembers doing, it does sound like something he probably did, perhaps on his way to doing something else, and so now he simply believes it happened. And from here on in, if someone tells him it didn't happen, look out.
Sorry, Donald Trump believes this now. And if you want to be one of his "supporters," you'd damn well better believe it too.