Trump Seems To Think An American Invented The 5,500-Year-Old Wheel

President Donald Trump on Wednesday hailed Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as “one of our great geniuses” and bragged about a compliment he received from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

During a Wednesday morning interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump claimed that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg personally told him he was “number one in the world on Facebook, which is “very nice,” the president was then asked to comment on Elon Musk.

“Well, you have to give him credit,” the president said. “I spoke to him very recently, and he’s also doing the rockets. He likes rockets. And he does good at rockets, too, by the way.”

“I never saw where the engines come down with no wings, no anything, and they’re landing,” he said. “I said I’ve never seen that before.”

He also mentioned Musk in the same vein as Edison, explaining that the United States needs to “protect our geniuses” like Musk, Edison and the inventor of the wheel.

“And I was worried about him because he’s one of our great geniuses and we have to protect our geniuses. You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the light bulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very smart people and we want to cherish those people,” Trump said. “That’s very important. He’s done a very good job.”

The president would then go on to claim that Tesla was on the verge of shutting down just a year ago but the company is now “going to be building a very big plant in the United States.”

“He has to,” Trump concluded. “He has to help us.”

Trump probably thinks that “The Flintstones” was a documentary. https://t.co/6MTbn5fn8v

— Clyde Haberman (@ClydeHaberman) January 22, 2020

The oldest wheel found in archeological excavations was discovered in what was Mesopotamia and is believed to be over 5,500 years old.

The first use of the wheel was not used for transportation, though, but rather as a potter’s wheel.

Trump has previously claimed that “the wheel is older than the wall.”

The first known walls used in civilization to enclose a city was the Wall of Jericho, a settlement that has been traced back to about 9000 B.C., according to Britannica. “The first wheel, however, is traced back to about 3500 B.C., thousands of years after walls, meaning the president was incorrect in his statements.”