Trump Lays Out New National Security Demand: ‘We Need Magnets’ 

President Donald Trump called on defense contractors to “do magnets,” saying that they are vital to national security and profitable for companies that produce them.

Trump attended the Pennsylvania Defense & Innovation Summit on Wednesday, where he addressed some of the country’s leading defense industry companies. He encouraged them to produce magnets, but offered no specifics:

Firepoint Energy in Tunnelton will be investing at least $170 million in [a] pilot program to convert coal waste into jet fuel, electrical power, critical minerals. And I hope you’re gonna do magnets. Somebody out there, I hope, you’re all brilliant people, magnets. Do magnets, ok? I’ll tell you how to make money. Do magnets. You’re doing a lot of great stuff. Do magnets. Because one thing we don’t have, but we are getting close, but do magnets.

So, I hope that [U.S.Air Force Contracting Officer] John Gray is listening to me so he can give ’em couple of bucks and go into the magnet business. I guarantee it’s gonna be a [intelligible]. It’s one thing, we don’t, for some reason, it’s not complex, not hard. We have the material. For some reason, they just don’t do it. We need magnets. So, one of you companies out there, go out, I’ll teach you how to make money.

The president did not elaborate on why the U.S. military needs magnets, about which he has made some curious remarks.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office in November, Trump declared that “nobody knows what magnets are.”

“Now, nobody knows what magnets are,” he said at the time. “And not overly sophisticated, but to build a 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.'”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump erroneously claimed that dropping water on magnets causes them to lose their magnetic properties.

Watch above via Fox News.

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