President Donald Trump said he’s disappointed in Boeing Co., which said Tuesday that its 737 Max won’t be cleared to return to flight until midyear, and praised Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk as “one of our great geniuses.”
“Very disappointing company,” Trump said of Boeing Wednesday during an interview with CNBC in Davos, Switzerland, where he’s attending the World Economic Forum’s annual conference. “This is one of the great companies of the world, let’s say as of a year ago, and then all of a sudden things happen.”
In the same interview, Trump marveled at the success of Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. “He does good at rockets too, by the way,” he said of Musk. “I never saw where the engines come down with no wings, no anything, and they’re landing.” Trump expressed surprise at Tesla’s resurgence since overcoming manufacturing difficulties with its Model 3 sedan last year.
“I was worried about him, because he’s one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump said. “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.”
Trump indicated he had taken note of the recent surge in Tesla’s stock price after it reported a surprise quarterly profit and opened a factory in China. The company’s market value climbed above Volkswagen AG’s for the first time to more than $100 billion.
“I mean, you go back a year and they were talking about the end of the company,” Trump said. “And now all of a sudden they’re talking about these great things.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
