After spending his first days in office bashing the press and expressing his insecurities about his inauguration day crowd, Donald Trump tweeted this morning that he will “focus” on “jobs and national security.”
Busy week planned with a heavy focus on jobs and national security. Top executives coming in at 9:00 A.M. to talk manufacturing in America.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2017
He is still pushing the claim that he will bring manufacturing jobs back to America. Other than his inauguration hats, apparently, which were made in China, meaning his job creation efforts are not off to a great job. In other words, that promise is already broken.
And it isn’t an aberration. His MAGA hats weren’t made here either, nor are his or his daughter Ivanka’s lines of clothing. Trump will not, of course, begin by bringing his own jobs back to the US. Those will remain profitably outsourced to China and Mexico.
The biggest problem for Trump is not that Republican orthodoxy claims government can’t create jobs but that President Obama already created 15 million of them. As USAToday put it, “President Trump promised to bring back jobs but inherits an economy that gained jobs for a record 75 straight months.”
So what, precisely, is Trump doing today? Bloomberg reports,
Trump will hold a breakfast meeting with the business leaders he named to an advisory panel on manufacturing, led by Andrew Liveris, chief executive officer of Dow Chemical Co., according to an administration official who asked not to be identified because the meeting participants hadn’t been announced. The private-sector group will advise the Commerce Department.
Trump will then meet in the afternoon with a group of labor leaders and U.S. workers, according to his public schedule.
Trump promises to create 25 million jobs but how he will do that is anyone’s guess. It is possible, even likely, he will claim credit for every job created by anyone anywhere. There should probably be real questions asked about how Trump defines the word “jobs” given his embrace of “alternate facts.”
The Daily Edge pokes some fun at his claims:
Trump promises to create 25M jobs, more than any other President ever, which @seanspicer calls “totally doable if we redefine ‘million'”
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) January 23, 2017
One thing is certain: Trump will have to show a great deal more ability to focus than he has to date, with every little thing said or reported about him sends him rushing off to tweet a bundle of lies and forget that his most important job is not dwelling on his manifest insecurities, but actually governing this great nation.