Trump Complains About Magnets in Unintelligible Rant

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.

European leaders are reeling after Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding “peace” talks. 

Trump and Putin announced Wednesday that they’d begin talking to deliver an end to the war on Ukraine. The news came as Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, warned NATO on the same day that it could no longer rely on U.S. protection from Russia attacks—and that liberating all of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine is “unrealistic.” 

Now the news of Trump and Putin putting their heads together to solve this crisis has sent a shudder through Europe, as its leaders fear the “solution” may be exactly what Trump has suggested in the past: Russia will be allowed to continue its invasion unfettered, with no care for the impacts on the rest of the continent.  

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius noted that it was “regrettable” that Hegseth had already professed that there was no way to end the Russian invasion before negotiations even began. 

“In my view, it would have been better to discuss a possible NATO membership for Ukraine or the country’s possible territorial losses only at the negotiating table and not to take it off the table beforehand,” Pistorius said, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers today. 

“There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine. And Ukraine’s voice must be at the heart of any talks,” U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey said to reporters at NATO headquarters. 

Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said it would be a “deadly trap” to accept any solution from Trump and Putin. 

“Whether we decide to fall under the illusion that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are going to find a solution for all of us, and that would be a deadly trap, or we will, as Europe, embrace our own economic, financial and military capacity,” he told CNN’s Natasha Bertrand.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy also spoke to Trump on Wednesday and called the discussion “meaningful.” 

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the U.S., we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. As President Trump said, let’s get it done. We agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings.”

Donald Trump’s plan to send undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay has left officials in the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense scrambling and confused trying to prepare the military base to house more immigrants.

CNN reports that DHS and DOD officials are confused about who is in charge and what will happen when migrants arrive at the base. Multiple federal agencies are involved, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol. They all are accustomed to different responsibilities.

“Nobody really knows what’s going on, between DOD, ICE, and CBP. We’ve got everybody pointing fingers, saying, ‘They’re in charge,’ ‘They’re paying for this,’ ‘They’re providing security.’ No one actually knows,” one source told the news outlet.

The Trump administration began transporting migrants to Guantánamo last week using U.S. military aircraft, prompting protests from immigration rights groups. There have been seven military flights transferring 98 migrants to the facility, as of Wednesday, according to data shared with CNN. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued over the immigrants being denied access to legal representation.

The criteria for who gets sent to the facility aren’t clear. So far, only men have been taken there, who are described as having “criminality,” but CBS News reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is mostly sending nonviolent, low-risk immigrants to the detention facility. One Venezuelan migrant was reportedly sent to Guantánamo because he had an “Air Jordan” tattoo.

It’s another example of Trump’s historic cruelty toward undocumented immigrants and anyone he deems a criminal. It’s red meat for the MAGA right, with their prejudices and long-standing opposition to immigration of any kind. So far, Democrats have not pushed back in large numbers against Trump’s immigration policies, even bolstering them in the case of the Laken Riley Act. For the foreseeable future, humanitarian concerns and comprehensive immigration reform are less than an afterthought.

Some of the country’s foremost national security experts are just as alarmed by Trump’s potential disregard for the judiciary branch as we are. 

During The New Republic’s “America in Crisis” event on Wednesday evening, a panel of experts raised their biggest concern about the direction in which the Trump administration is headed: No one knows what happens next. 

“From the prosecutorial perspective, what’s the worst case scenario? What could [the Trump administration] do if they really decided to go for it, as it were?” New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent asked. “What should people do, what recourse do they have?”

“Particularly one thing that concerns me … the next step when the Trump administration refuses to abide by a federal court order,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney famous for defending whistleblowers. “I have strength right now as a lawyer, and we are winning in the legal battles, but if that happens, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.”

Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Security official in the Trump administration, echoed those sentiments. 

“I would say that that’s my biggest fear, is what Mark Zaid just said.… I’m under no illusions that that is something that could happen when they show plain disregard for that.” Troye urged citizens to speak up in the face of this looming threat. “Make your voices heard. Write letters to the editor, follow your investigative journalist.… Call your members of Congress. Our voices as people still matter. They make us feel like they don’t, but they do matter.”

The fact that these specialists shared the same fear of an impending constitutional crisis was sobering. Those fears were compounded on Monday, when a Rhode Island judge found that the Trump administration had violated a court order to unfreeze some federal funds. The courts have been long viewed as the final line of defense against Trump’s most authoritarian tendencies. But even if Democrats and NGOs sue Trump and win, who’s to say that he’ll undo the policies he already put in place? 

Vice President JD Vance, a Yale law school graduate, offered his own reinterpretation of the Constitution just days before Monday’s court ruling. “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote on X. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.  Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

You can watch a full recording of The New Republic’s event, “America in Crisis: Navigating the Dark Road Ahead.” This event was produced in partnership with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Rachel Carson Council.

House Republicans have released their budget plan, and in order to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, they are planning to slash funding for Medicaid and food stamps.

The early budget includes a statement where representatives on the House Budget Committee pledge to cut a whopping $2 trillion in mandatory spending. While the text doesn’t mention Medicaid by name, it directs the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion in its budget, which is near impossible to do without touching the health care program.

The budget plan also directs the Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion in cuts, which seems to indicate that SNAP (the food stamp program) will be cut by at least 20 percent. This would devastate the lives of millions of Americans who depend on the welfare programs. Other committees have also been given cuts that will hurt less wealthy Americans: The Education and Workforce Committee has been allocated $330 billion in cuts, which is expected to come from student loan programs.

These reductions won’t even pay for the tax cuts the GOP is proposing, which amount to a whopping $4.5 trillion and require the debt ceiling to be raised by $4 trillion. Keep in mind that President Trump has also promised to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits, which combined with these cuts will balloon the budget deficit.

Many of the programs on the chopping block are popular with the American people, and won’t reflect well on Donald Trump and the GOP, especially with correct framing from Democrats. Pushback is also coming from other Republicans who think the cuts don’t go far enough or are concerned with a backlash from constituents. One thing is for sure: There’s about to be a big budget fight on Capitol Hill, and Trump won’t make it easy.