Trump Misleads About Same 5,000 Jobs But It's A Lesson Democrats Should Learn

Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that Sprint would be creating 5,000 new jobs and he, of course, took credit for that. Said Trump, “I was just called by the head people at Sprint, and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. They have taken them from other countries. They are bringing them back to the United States.” As usual with all things Trump, this was just another fiction.  As Kevin Drum points out, this is the fourth time that these same 5,000 new jobs have been announced and Trump has taken credit for them the last two times. Sprint originally announced these jobs all the way back in April. Then the jobs were announced again in October when Softbank created a large investment fund. Then, in November, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son met with Trump at Trump Tower and announced the investment fund would create 50,000 new jobs in the US. These 5,000 jobs are part of that 50,000. And then on Wednesday Trump supposedly received a call from Softbank again simply to remind him about those same 5,000 jobs.

Of course, the real reason behind all this PR is that Softbank owns Sprint and wants to merge Sprint with T-Mobile. That merger was previously and correctly rejected on antitrust grounds. The telecom industry is already a pretty tight oligopoly with ATT, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile and this merger would basically reduce the dominant firms to just three. This kind of oligopoly presents huge barriers to entry, less competition among the dominant firms, higher prices for consumers, and reduced productivity.

Now the fact that Trump is misleading us once again is something that most of us who live in the real world have come to expect. But these kind of announcements are politically shrewd. Most Americans do not follow the news out of Washington very closely and this kind of announcement will sound to them like Trump is creating even more jobs. And it is this relentless pounding away on message that has helped make the Republican party successful. It is also something that Democrats seem incapable of doing well. Obama and the Democrats should have been talking about how they saved the auto industry over Republican objections at least once every week since 2009. Because it is only through that kind of relentless messaging that Democrats can break through the noise of people’s everyday life and the Republican/Fox/Drudge echo chamber. And with Republicans in total control, Democrats, now more than ever, need to learn how to become a real opposition party and relentlessly stay on message.