The quote, when talking about the carrier Gerald R. Ford (which does not have magnetic elevators, btw).
They had almost a billion dollar cost over on the magnetic elevators. Think of it, magnets. 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. Why didn’t they use John Deere? Why didn’t they bring in the John Deere people? Do you like John Deere? I like John Deere
Even if we pretended that quote were coherent and read what he intended (criticizing the electromagnetic catapults, not elevators) instead of what he actually said.... he wants a fucking tractor company to work on them? John Deere knows fuck-all about high-tech linear induction motors; even under the most charitable interpretation possible his position is still asinine and nonsensical!
Edit: I don't know why I'm even surprised by this. I guess it's just, of all companies he could've pulled out of his ass, John fucking Deere?! That's a weird random choice even for him.
Well we've all seen the man struggle with a glass of water. Trump v Water Glass is a tough match. Also, he was campaigning in Iowa at the time. Anyone at that rally that wasn't wearing a MAGA hat was wearing a John Deere one. Similar to the "man, woman, person, camera" incident. It's a short trip from eyes to mouth with this one.
Sounds like he's talking about a specific implementation of electro-mangets, and giving his concerns that electronic systems applied to elevators in the Navy, could be vulnerable to water damage as compared to mechanically engineered system.
...so this obviously means he's fit and sane to implement The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a plan to "be a dictator only on day one" by firing any democratic party supporting liberals across all departments of the public services, and installing Republican party friendly employees in those positions instead. This would represent a level of political persecution never seen before in the history of American democracy, and possibly the end of American democracy.
It's what Clarence Thomas calls the dismantling of the "Administrative State" and has been a life long goal of his. Ergo it's likely the Supreme Court would allow this behaviour as part of "Unitary Executive Theory".
I say all this because it's easy to make Trump and MAGA look stupid. They, like many fascist movements appeal to a very simplistic base of people - but at the upper eschelons they do have a plan, and do have major peices in place.
In typical Trump fashion he probably couldn't comprehend anything about the advanced weapon elevators testing and delays. Or the electromagnetic catapult system that's pretty flipping cool.
I'm sure some wasted their time telling him why Ford was behind and over budget for technical reasons. And then bingo bango you got retarded dementia boy word salad.
Sounds like he confused magnets for cotton candy. Easy mistake, as both can stick to certain things. Why are people blowing this out of proportion? We all know what he really meant.
I don't remember the details, because hell if I'll waste my memory on that, but I do remember he was talking about an electromagnet, and insisted that it would stop working if sprayed with sea water.
It's not as outrageous as the literal thing he said, but it's still quite dumb.
Maybe he has a point, but there's probably some organization that knows how to keep electrical systems running at sea. Maybe they could help the US Navy out with this.
Now they want to install these "transporters" on the latest flagship. Can you believe it! Transporters. That don't work in an ion storm. Space is full of ion storms! They're useless. I talked to a guy named Reg down in engineering. Good fellow, really smart, knows what he's doing. I asked him, Reg, which would be better? Transporters or shuttlecraft? "Shuttlecraft" is better according to Reg, the man who knows all about how these things work. Transporters! Ha! Pour a cup of water on them and they stop working, and you have to be a Zephram Cochrane if you want to know how to fix them. Shuttles are what you want, solid tritanium alloy, that's what you can trust.
I would be a luddite about transporters too. They're just the Prestige duplicator except people treat it like it's totally fine. There's even a plotline about them fucking up the kill and leaving an earlier iteration of Riker stranded in a planet. No thanks, I'll be staying physical.