Trump Compares Putting ICE Officers In Airports To… Paper Clips?!? | EUROtoday

In remarks to the media earlier than boarding Air Force One, Trump swiftly took credit score for the plan to complement airport staffing amid the partial authorities shutdown as Transportation Security Administration brokers work with out pay or give up and name out sick, leaving vacationers pissed off with rising wait occasions.

He proceeded to make a weird comparability. “That was like the paper clip. You know the story of the paper clip? 182 years ago, a man discovered the paper clip. It was so simple. And everybody that looked at it said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ ICE was my idea.”

Trump is usually improper about when the paper clip was invented — and his estimates have various wildly.

The first bent-wire paper clip was patented by Samuel B. Fay in 1867, or 159 years in the past, in response to EarlyOfficeMuseum.com. The iconic “Gem” paper clip design seen in most workplace provide shops as we speak — which was by no means patented within the U.S. — surfaced round 1892, 134 years in the past.

But in remarks at a White House occasion final yr, Trump claimed that somebody turned a “very rich person” once they got here up with the concept for the paper clip in 1817, effectively over two centuries in the past.

He additionally claimed at a 2024 rally that somebody “came up with a paper clip” roughly 129 years prior. (This is considerably true, per EarlyOfficeMuseum.com, though the “utility paper clip” patented that yr is far more obscure than the beforehand launched “Gem” design.)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-ice-agents-airports-invent-paper-clips_n_69c1446de4b04cdc2d76edef