Trump Declares: ‘Nobody Knows What Magnets Are’ 

President Donald Trump went on yet another rant about magnets, this time telling reporters that “nobody knows” what they are.

Trump took questions in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, where CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president about a critique from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in which the lawmaker said she wanted Trump to focus more on domestic policy.

The president responded by saying Greene has “lost her way” before launching into a meandering digression about NATO, China, and magnets:

China was going to hit us with rare-earth. Now, everybody says, “Oh, what does that mean?” Magnets. If China refused to give magnets, ’cause they have a monopoly on magnets ’cause they’re allowed to happen 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 magnet system would take two years. So if I weren’t able to say to China, “Look, if you’re gonna do that to us, we’re gonna charge you a 158% tariff.” It was 100% on top of 58%. And China called up immediately and, “Listen, we will make peace.” And we made peace. We made a great deal. We made an unbelievable deal. China’s paying tariffs to the United States. Not the United States paying tariffs to China, which has always been the way it was. Nobody can believe these deals.

Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that tariffs are paid by the exporters, but they are paid by importers and typically passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

While at a campaign rally last year, Trump erroneously claimed that magnets can be rendered ineffective by spilling water on them.

“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,” he said in Iowa last year.

“You know, the new thing is magnets,” Trump stated while addressing U.S. soldiers in Japan last month. “So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Watch above via Fox News.