Will Cornett, an employee of Carrier Corp., got an unsolicited shout-out from President-elect Donald Trump during his appearance Thursday at a Carrier facility in Indianapolis. After the event, Cornet appeared on CNN to thank Trump for keeping his promise to save jobs at the Carrier plant that were supposed to be outsourced to Mexico.
Carrier, an air conditioning company, announced this week after discussions with the incoming Trump administration it would keep about 1,000 jobs in Indiana that it originally planned to send to Mexico. Trump spoke in Indianapolis to celebrate the news and told the crowd he had seen a nightly news story about a Carrier employee who believed the company would not leave because Trump promised it would stay.
"Is he in the room by any chance?" Trump asked the crowd. The worker's mother then stood up and acknowledged that it was her son who had appeared in the newscast Trump was referencing.
In his CNN interview, Cornett told host Brooke Baldwin that he had no idea Trump would be talking about him in his speech.
"So you believed Mr. Trump when he made his promise?" Baldwin asked.
"Yes, I believed him 100 percent. That's why I voted for him," Cornett said. "This was a promise that he was going to make us, and I believed in it."
Cornett said he did not meet Trump at the announcement on Thursday but would thank the president-elect for the Carrier deal if given the chance.
"I would just say thank you for keeping your promise and that I believe in you and today you're my hero," Cornett told Baldwin.
Baldwin also asked Cornett what he would say to other employees who are fearful and anxious that their own jobs may be outsourced.
"I'd tell them not to doubt the Donald. He did it once, he can probably do it again," Cornett said.