This is crony capitalism, with potentially devastating consequences. If Mr. Trump appoints people to the antitrust division and the F.C.C. who are willing to wave through a Sprint/T-Mobile merger, he will do lasting damage to the economy that far outweighs any benefit from 5,000 jobs, jobs that might have been created even without the merger. Individuals and businesses will find wireless service costs a lot more when they have only Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile/Sprint to choose from.

In addition, a combined Sprint and T-Mobile would inevitably cut thousands of jobs as executives merge the companies’ networks, stores, billing systems, customer service departments and so on. That has happened time and again after big telecom deals. When AT&T was acquiring BellSouth in 2006, executives said they expected to cut 10,000 jobs after the deal closed in December of that year. Since then AT&T has also acquired DirecTV. At the end of September, AT&T employed 273,000 people around the world, down from 309,000 in 2007.

It has become abundantly clear that Mr. Trump is easily distracted by shiny objects, especially if they reflect back on him. He’s more interested in boasting about how he personally saved a thousand jobs at Carrier, say, than in policy details that could make a difference in the lives of tens of millions of workers. Never mind that Carrier is only keeping about 800 jobs and that its chief executive said that the company would get rid of some of those anyway through automation. This should greatly worry Americans, especially people who are counting on Mr. Trump to revive the economy and help the middle class.