Donald Trump is not known for sticking to the subject. Ask him about the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, his young and influential political ally, and he’ll pivot to talking about construction of a White House ballroom. Get him on stage for a campaign rally days before an election and you might hear him riff on the size of golfing legend Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. And, of course, if he’s addressing the issue of immigration, there’s always the chance that “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” might come up.
Lately, the president has seen fit to repeatedly digress on something that he has no grasp on and has never once been asked to explain: magnets. How he came to be so fixated yet misinformed on a phenomenon typically explored in seventh grade science class remains something of a puzzler, but it’s clear that he has strong feelings on the matter. Trump’s main takeaway seems to be that magnetism is fundamentally unexplainable and therefore unreliable as an element of human technology. Here, we take a look at his history of wrestling with the principle of physics that allows you to put up pictures on your refrigerator.
Believe it or not, Trump actually used to like magnets — at least for metaphorical purposes. In the years leading up to his 2016 presidential run, he was still playing the role of business guru, using his Twitter account to dispense nuggets of advice like this one: “Set the example, and you’ll be a magnet for the right people. That’s the best way to work with people you like.”
Trump tweeted some version of this quote — which comes from his 2009 book Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life — several times in 2014 and 2015, evidently liking the sound of it. But once he became a presidential candidate, he started talking about magnets in a negative (though still figurative) light. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to “turn off the jobs and benefits magnet” attracting immigrants to the United States. In 2018, when he argued that armed teachers would deter school shootings, he tweeted that a “‘gun free’ school is a magnet for bad people.” And in a nonsensical passage of a 2019 speech to the Faith & Freedom Coalition, he accused Democrats of failing to address “the magnets of child smuggling.”
Though Trump had yet to publicly reveal his ignorance of literal magnetism, a few of his detractors early on drew a connection between him and the 2010 Insane Clown Posse song “Miracles,” in which the rap duo famously ask: “Fucking magnets, how do they work?” Early in the 2016 election cycle, one Twitter user posted a meme of ICP’s Shaggy 2 Dope delivering the magnets line, adding the caption “Trump doesn’t know how Magnets work. #LittleKnownCandidateFacts.” It was a generic insult to Trump’s intelligence that would later prove to be remarkably accurate.
Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System
Throughout his first term, Trump repeatedly criticized the design of the new Gerald R. Ford class of Navy aircraft carriers, and was reportedly fixated on one element in particular: the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which launches planes with electric currents, replacing older steam-powered catapults. He claimed shortly after taking office in 2017 that he’d been informed that there were problems with the new system, saying that it “costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good,” and that “ you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.”
Trump again rambled about magnetic catapults in a 2018 meeting with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “They’re using magnets instead of steam,” he griped. “It’s frankly ridiculous.” He continued to insist that the upgraded launch system was running into technical problems and too expensive, telling the attendees at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in 2019 that “you have to go to MIT to figure out how this damn thing works.” He seemed to be under the mistaken impression that the EMALS didn’t work at all. “We have an aircraft carrier, you can’t send planes off the damn thing,” he said.
Elevator Hater
Trump didn’t have much cause to bring up magnets after he was voted out of office in 2020, but as he embarked on his 2024 comeback, his peculiar contempt for them came roaring back. During an Iowa rally during the Republican primaries, he blasted not only the “stupid electric catapults” on the Gerald R. Ford carriers but the installation of magnetic elevators for the planes rather than hydraulic ones.
This time around, he added a novel theory on the properties of magnets. “Think of it, magnets,” he said. “Now, all I know about magnets is this. Give me a glass of water. Let me drop it on the magnets. That’s the end of the magnets.” Trump was apparently suggesting that magnets are generally unsuitable for an ocean-faring vessel, but as many commentators pointed out, getting a magnet wet does not destroy it or diminish its magnetic properties.
In February 2025, reinstalled in the White House and taking questions from reporters at the swearing in of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Trump once more returned to the bugbear of magnetic elevators. Segueing from a tangent in which he explained his dissatisfaction over contract negotiations with Boeing on the price of new Air Force One jets, he began to complain about cost overruns on the Gerald R. Ford.
“They have all magnetic elevators to lift up 25 planes at a time, 20 planes at a time,” he said. “And instead of using hydraulic, like on tractors, that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything, they used magnets. It’s a new theory, magnets are going to lift the planes up, and it doesn’t work.”
Trump also tried out his routine during remarks on the Navy crew of the U.S.S. George Washington in Japan during a tour of East Asia last month, encouraging them to shout out their support for steam catapults instead of the electromagnetic system.
“Let me ask you the second question,” he continued. “Hydraulic for your elevators, or magnets? You know, the new thing is magnets. So instead of using hydraulic that you can be hit by lightning and it’s fine, you take a little glass of water and you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s gonna happen.” He then vowed to sign an executive order to ensure that all aircraft carriers are built with steam launch systems and hydraulic elevators rather than using magnets for either.
The China Connection
This week, Trump delivered his most confounding comments on magnets to date, confirming that he does not understand what they are in the slightest.
In an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News, Trump discussed his trade war with China, which eased somewhat after he and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed last month to roll back certain retaliatory tariffs. As part of the temporary truce, China also agreed to suspend limits on exports of rare earth metals, some of which are used to make magnets. The nation is far and away the global leader in refining these elements to make parts for electronic devices.
“President Xi was willing to do the rare earth thing, that’s magnets,” Trump told Ingraham. “Now, nobody knows what a magnet is. If you don’t have a magnet, you don’t make a car. You don’t make a computer. You don’t make televisions and radios and all the other things — you don’t make anything.” Trump went on to give an account of his discussions with Xi. “Because of tariffs, I called, I said, ‘Listen, here’s the story. You’re going to play the magnet. I’m going to play the tariff on you,’” he said.
Trump didn’t elaborate on why he believes magnets to be fundamentally mysterious, though that can hardly be considered slip of the tongue, because he made the same claim later that day.
That evening, speaking from the Oval Office at the swearing in of businessman Sergio Gor as ambassador to India, Trump went off about China, tariffs, and, of course, magnets. “China was going to hit us with rare earth,” he said. “Now, everybody says, ‘What does that mean?’ Magnets. If China refused to give magnets because they have a monopoly on magnets because they were allowed to — it happened over a 32-year period — there wouldn’t be a car made in the entire world, there wouldn’t be a radio, there wouldn’t be a television, there wouldn’t be internet, there wouldn’t be anything because magnets are such a part — Now, nobody knows what magnets are, and not overly sophisticated, but to build a magnet system would take two years.”
How long until we hear another of the president’s philosophical musing on magnets? No matter the time, place, or matter at hand, he is drawn to the topic as if by an unseen force. And he seems to be increasingly convinced that they are some kind of plot to undermine American power and prosperity. Whatever he once heard about magnets being untrustworthy, it must have really stuck.
