Here’s a little thread about a major corporation, Trump’s lying, and the weirdness of attempting to fact-check him.
Trump said at his Minnesota roundtable last week: “The head of U.S. Steel called me the other day, and he said, ‘We’re opening up six major facilities and expanding facilities that have never been expanded.’”
This rang Lie Alarm bells for me: the sentence construction is nearly identical to this one about a nonexistent phone call Trump famously made up. “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them.”
Also, U.S. Steel has announced only that it is restarting two furnaces at a single plant, in Granite City, Illinois. No public mention of five other plants. Industry analyst Chuck Bradford tells me he hasn’t heard of any others.
So…did U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt actually call the president and tell him they’re opening up six major facilities, though they’ve only announced one to the public? This would be big news about a publicly traded company…
I’ve sent three emails and made two phone calls to the company’s spokesperson, starting late on Friday. She has so far ignored them.
Companies would sometimes prefer the president lie about them than confirm that the president is lying about them. The End.
