TRUMP TWEETS BACK AT NBC: Companies are adding US jobs 'because of me!'

"Totally biased @NBCNews went out of its way to say that the big announcement from Ford, G.M., Lockheed & others that jobs are coming back to the U.S., but had nothing to do with TRUMP, is more FAKE NEWS," Trump tweeted. "Ask top CEO's of those companies for real facts. Came back because of me!"

The tweets followed an article published Tuesday from Ben Popken of NBC News that analyzed the announcements by numerous companies since Trump's election of plans to create jobs in the US.

With Trump having often used his Twitter account to attack companies like General Motors for planning to move jobs outside the US, Popken cited analysts who said some firms seemed to be jumping out ahead of the president-elect's criticism by making early announcements.

As noted by Popken, not all of the recent announcements have involved actual new jobs attributable to Trump. Some also appear to involve job creation that had long been planned and only announced after the election, while have others involved jobs that were never moving in the first place.

In the latter case, Trump tweeted that Ford was keeping jobs at a factory in Kentucky that had no plans to cut jobs and criticized Toyota for moving jobs to Mexico even though it was not doing so. Some companies like Sprint have also repackaged previously announced hiring sprees that have then been touted by Trump as new jobs.

The NBC News report noted that many announcements may not involve job creation directly tied to Trump's election but are still timed to avoid the ire of the president-elect.

Announcements that seem to have been in the works for a while include Amazon's plan to add 100,000 US workers in its fulfillment centers (an announcement that did not mention Trump) and Taco Bell's announcement that it planned to add 100,000 jobs as part of a long-term restaurant expansion.

Some of the announcements do seem to be new, however, such as Bayer's addition of 3,000 jobs — which Trump tweeted about following his criticism of the NBC News report — Hyundai's addition of thousands of jobs, and Lockheed Martin's addition of 1,800 jobs.

Trump's use of the "fake news" buzzword in his Wednesday tweet to describe the NBC News article showed a continuation of attempts by him to discredit media reports he sees as unfair. The term fake news emerged during this election cycle in reference to made-up articles designed to influence public opinion or generate advertising revenue from a partisan audience but has since been used often to mean news with which the speaker disagrees.

Trump also tweeted about NBC's "Today" show after the morning program followed up on the report, saying the show was "doing so badly compared to its glorious past." "Today" was the top-rated morning show in December.