It’s not like nobody tried to tell them.

No, seriously. When someone with a long and well-known history of cheating and scamming makes a “deal” with you, if you shake hands on it, you’d better count your fingers, after.

Back in November 2016 Trump struck such a deal with Gregory Hayes, chairman of Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies Corporation.

I remember all the back-patting when the “deal” was made to keep those Carrier jobs in Indianapolis, Indiana. A plan to outsource jobs to Mexico had been thwarted. It looked great for Trump, who used his running mate, Mike Pence’s pull in the state as the former governor, to help shoehorn the arrangement through.

Trump got to play the great hero of the American worker, for a bit.

Now reality is settling in.

In May, Carrier announced 632 people would have to find some other way to pay their bills. They were automating those jobs once held by American workers, beginning December 22.

One of those workers, Brenda Darlene Battle, a longtime employee of the facility, soon to be out in the cold, had a few choice words for the entire ruse that was played out last year.

“Trump came in there to the factory last December and blew smoke up our a*ses,” she said. “He wasn’t gonna save those jobs. And, if that’s the case, he would have saved us and Rexnord, a company around the corner from us that makes parts.”

Battle, a 55-year-old Indianapolis native who worked for Carrier since she was 20, said Trump supporters at the factory were quieter now than they had been before the election.

“Some of them got let go (on Thursday), too,” Battle said. “People can’t support their families.”

Reality is a harsh mistress.

They’ll have their red caps, at least.

Battle, an admitted supporter of Hillary Clinton, went on to say she felt Trump and Hayes both knew that everything that was being agreed to between them was an act.

“I think the CEO of Carrier and Trump was in bed together the whole time,” she said. “That day Trump came to Carrier, those two were too chummy. The way they sniggled and giggled. That sneaky kind of sh*t-eating grin.”

You can’t really blame Battle for being upset. She’s 55-years old and suddenly is faced with the prospect of trying to find another job, when all she’s known for all of her adult life is that Carrier plant.

Most people, when they realize their lives and livelihood were used for little more than political props, would react much the same way.