Trump says 'nobody cares' while interrupting Secretary of Energy Chris Wright mid-story
United States President Donald Trump openly mocked and interrupted a cabinet official while he was mid-story.
Earlier this week on Monday (22 June), the 80-year-old Republican signed two executive orders meant to accelerate the development of quantum computing.
"The first executive order launches a national effort to produce a quantum computer capable of performing important scientific calculations and to develop quantum-enabled sensors and networks in the next five years," Trump said.
"The second order I'm signing directs federal agencies to transition to what is called quantum cryptography," he added.
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He signed the orders in the White House's Oval Office and had asked Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to speak during the signing, which also saw various tech leaders in attendance, including the president of Google and the CEO of IBM.
Wright began telling an anecdote about Albert Einstein but appeared to have some difficulties with the timeline, prompting Trump to tell him 'nobody cares'.
"You've done a great job. All of you. Chris Wright, please?" Trump said, as Wright replied: "Yes, thank you, Mr President. So, a hundred tw–, a hundred twenty, a hundred forty-one years ago, Albert Einstein... hundred 121 years ago, Albert Einstein published a paper..."
Trump then piped up with 'nobody cares' as the packed room erupted into laughter.
"Good point. Good point!" Wright beamed as Trump added: "Usually, they won't care."
Continuing his story, Wright went on: "Published a paper on the photoelectric effect, recognising the quantum behaviour of light, that it came in quanta. Forty years after that, President Trump's uncle, John Trump, was a pioneer in applying light radiation and the reflections of it to develop radar at the MIT Radiation Lab.
"Critical in D-Day. Critical, in the end, in winning World War II."
While Trump has previously boasted about his uncle John Trump teaching Ted Kaczynski, who later became The Unabomber at MIT, Kaczynski didn't actually attend the prestigious school.
"The future of computing is going to be a three-legged stool," Wright continued. "High performance computing. Basically, Moore's Law and semiconducting manufacturing. It's artificial intelligence that everyone's seeing and hearing about that's supercharging it. The third leg of that computing stool is scientifically relevant quantum computing. This is tricky."
The Secretary of Energy then concluded: "We're not there yet. We're close. But with this executive order and this coordinated effort, we will have scientifically relevant, meaning error-corrected quantum computing during this administration.
"The impacts of it will be tremendous."
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Rhiannon Ingle