Trump Thinks He Opened A Mac Factory That's Been In Business Since 2013
Donald Trump takes credit for opening a Mac factory in Austin that opened without him six years ago
On Wednesday, November 20, 2019, President Trump walked through an Austin, Texas Apple factory with Apple CEO Tim Cook and took credit for opening said factory, despite the fact that Apple has actually been making Mac products there since 2013. It’s unclear if this is due to senility or Trump’s seemingly boundless ego and narcissism that makes him take credit for things that don’t belong to him — whatever the case, WTF?
After Trump walked through Apple’s Mac Pro facility and talked about the importance of creating factory jobs in the U.S., he tweeted: “Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America. Today Nancy Pelosi closed Congress because she doesn’t care about American Workers!”
Aside from that Nancy Pelosi barb, Trump actually believes that he opened a six-year-old factory… today. According to The Washington Post, the factory that Trump walked through on Wednesday is a plant owned by Flex, an Apple contractor, and they’ve been assembling Mac computers there since 2013. Not only that, but Cook himself tweeted in December of 2013, “We have begun manufacturing the Mac Pro in Austin. It’s the most powerful Mac ever. Orders start tomorrow.”
So is Trump just delusional at this point? Does he think that every building he walks into belongs to him? Or perhaps, it’s all very twisted PR. One of Trump’s primary campaign promises (aside from “the wall”) was to bring more factory jobs back to the U.S. It’s true that Apple makes the majority of their products in China and because of the president’s ongoing trade war with China, Trump tweeted at Apple back in July that if Apple makes any Mac products in China, they will not be given a “tariff waiver, or relief.”
Cut to this week and Trump waltzes into a domestic factory that makes Mac products claiming he “opened” it, in the hopes that people (i.e. his base) will connect the dots and think that Trump and his campaign promise to “bring jobs back to the U.S.” are directly responsible for Apple’s Austin, Texas factory. Then Trump can say that he made good on his promise to bring jobs back, point to the Austin factory, and all his acolytes will cheer. The only problem is, Trump had absolutely no influence on this factory as it’s been manufacturing Mac products long before Trump even launched his presidential campaign. Neither Trump nor his American jobs agenda had anything to do with this Apple factory.
On Wednesday, Apple announced that it was starting construction on a $1 billion, 3 million-square-foot campus in Austin, Texas, which Trump also has nothing to do with.
