Trump seems to think the wheel was invented in the U.S.

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Trump seems to think the wheel was invented in the U.S.

January 22, 2020

.polaris__post-meta--date { display: none; } .polaris__post-meta--date.no-script { display: block; padding-left: 45px } January 22, 2020

JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Try as he might, Trump just can't reinvent the facts on this one.

Somehow, Trump stuck a very incorrect notion into a question about Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk in a Wednesday interview with CNBC's Squawk Box. After praising Musk because he "does good at rockets," Trump suggested "he's one of our great geniuses" who "we have to protect." After all, Trump said, we have to "protect Thomas Edison" and "people who came up with the light bulb and the wheel and all of these things."

"You have to give [@ElonMusk] credit," President Trump tells @JoeSquawk. "He's one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius.""He's going to be building a very big plant in the United States. He has to, because we help him, so he has to help us." pic.twitter.com/WIlBJS0saE
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 22, 2020

One wouldn't think it has to be said, but the wheel was invented thousands of years before the United States existed and it's not exactly clear who did it. The oldest wheel dates to at least 3000 B.C. and was found, coincidentally, in modern-day Slovenia.