Trump Says We Should Protect The Inventor Of The Wheel

The wheel originated in Mesopotamia around 5,500 years ago.
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Ancient Mesopotamians might have been interested to know that someday a world leader would offer them protection for their genius invention.

During a CNBC interview in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that we must “protect our genius,” citing Elon Musk, Thomas Edison, and the inventor of the wheel as examples.

Trump, who is in Davos for the World Economic Forum this week, was praising Tesla CEO Musk for both his car and SpaceX businesses following some problems in recent years.

“I was worried about him, because he’s one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump said of Musk. “You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison, and we have to protect all of these people that came up with, originally, the lightbulb, and the wheel and all of these things.”

The wheel made its first appearance in Mesopotamia — an ancient region that corresponds mostly to present-day Iraq — around 3,500 B.C.

“You go back a year, and they were talking about the end of the company,” Trump said in a nod to Tesla’s legal battles. “And now all of a sudden they’re talking about these great things.”

The president also applauded Musk’s expertise in aerospace.

“He’s also doing the rockets, he likes rockets, and he does good at rockets, too, by the way,” he said. “I never saw where the engines come down with no wings, no anything, and they’re landing.”

Here’s what Twitter users thought of all this:

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