President Donald Trump told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday morning that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, is a genius akin to Thomas Edison – and that both men need to be  evered for their contributions to society such as “electricity and the wheel.”

After Trump made the statement, many on social media went ballistic, deriding the commander-in-chief, while stating that it was not Musk who created the wheel but the Ancient Sumerians and other nomadic Mesopotamian clans.

Musk is “one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump reported to the co-host of Squawk BoxJoe Kernen, while he was overseas attending the Economic Forum with other world leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

When Kernen prompted Trump to comment on Musk, he replied, “Well, you have to give him credit,” Trump stated. “He’s also doing the rockets. He likes rockets, and he does good at rockets too, by the way.”

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“You know, we have to protect Thomas Edison and we have to protect all of these people that came up with originally the light bulb and the wheel and all of these things. And he’s one of our very smart people and we want to cherish those people,” Trump stated. “We want to cherish those people. That’s very important. He’s done a very good job.”

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