Ralph Gilles, the head of product design at Chrysler, sent a tweet to Donald Trump on Thursday that described the real estate executive as being “full of shit.” The reason for the tweet was that Trump claims that Chrysler is sending Jeep production from the United States to China. Gilles is the second executive from the company to deny the claim, which was made by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in front of a crowd in Ohio last week.
Trump posted the following tweet, saying, “Obama is a terrible negotiator. He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China–and will!”
Gilles, using his Twitter account, tweeted the following to Trump, “You are full of shit!” Gilles then tweeted, “I apologize for my language, but lies are just that, lies.”
Romney’s claims were denied in an email penned by Chrysler Group LLC Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne. The email was sent to the company’s employees and it said, “I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China.”
Romney was speaking during a campaign event in Defiance, Ohio last week when he started talking about a news article he recently read. He claims the article said that Chrysler was considering moving “all production to China” for its Jeep brand. Jeep has assembly plants in Toledo, Ohio; Illinois and Detroit.
Following the campaign stop, the Romney campaign released an advertisement that did not mention the move to China by Chrysler but it did mention that the company has thought about production of Jeeps in China. Marchionne said that if Jeep began producing vehicles in China it would be strictly for the Chinese market. Marchionne also said that Chrysler would not take production away from the United States plants. He then said that the company has been adding jobs and investment to its Ohio plant.