Trump Complains About Magnets in Unintelligible Rant

Yahoo

13-02-2025

Donald Trump complained about a 'new theory' about magnets during a rant about Boeing, while answering questions that were not about magnets or Boeing at all.
After swearing in Tulsi Gabbard Wednesday as his new director of national intelligence, the president embarked on a winding hour-long question-and-answer session with reporters, where he alleged that 'billions and billions of dollars' had been 'thrown away illegally.'
Trump threw the blame around widely, alleging massive fraud at the Department of Education, until the weave found its way to Boeing, the airplane manufacturer that produces the Boeing 747 the president flies on. Trump spoke at length and to little effect about how he was 'not happy about that whole thing.'
'We signed a very strong contract, I signed a guaranteed maximum contract which they haven't seen in a long time. And they're saying they're getting hurt by it,' Trump ranted, saying that Boeing wanted 'more money.'
'But they have to produce the product and we expect them to produce the product. They have to produce the product, they agreed to build planes at a certain price,' Trump rambled. 'They're not used to that. They're used to having time and material contracts where whatever it costs time and material. No dates. No anything. And it ends up costing five times more.'
Trump's comments about cheaping out on Boeing are particularly disturbing considering recent allegations that the company might have cut corners during the production of its 737 Max 9 planes. In any case, it seems that reflecting about things that end up being more expensive than you might expect sent Trump's brain careening into one of his old rants about magnets on boats.
'Take a look at the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier, the Ford. It was supposed to cost $3 billion. It ends up costing like $18 billion,' Trump said. 'And they make, of course, all electric catapults which don't work.'
The USS Gerald R. Ford actually cost roughly $13 billion to make, and it's certainly not clear that its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System doesn't work. But the president wasn't done.
'And they have all magnetic elevators to lift up 25 planes at a time, 20 planes at a time. And instead of using hydraulic, like on tractors that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything, they use magnets,' Trump said.
'It's a new theory. Magnets are going to lift the planes up, and it doesn't work. And they had billions and billions of dollars of cost overruns,' he said.
While the production of the ship was delayed and experienced cost overruns, it's not entirely clear why Trump has decided that the magnets on these ships don't work. But, he has talked incoherently about this technology before. In January 2024, Trump baselessly claimed that magnets stop working when placed in water, and therefore were a stupid thing to put on a boat. When weaving his way through his grievances, the president's mind has a tendency to repeat the hits, even the more inane ones.
'You look at the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that this country is going through. And we have to straighten it out,' Trump concluded.