‘Get grandpa to bed’: Trump's confusing lawnmower rant baffles

President Donald Trump baffled critics Monday with a brief rant about complicated lawnmowers, one that some argued was a telling admission about his life as a “pampered billionaire.”

“You need to be a student at the top of your class at MIT to turn on a lawnmower nowadays, you know?” Trump said during his rally in Nebraska. “But I got rid of all that stuff; now you can have a lawnmower!”

Trump then mimicked the act of starting a lawnmower — pulling on an imaginary starter cord and shouting, “boom” — eliciting applause and cheers from attendees.

Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief at the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, argued that starting a lawnmower had “never been easier in the history of human civilization,” and that Trump’s remarks said more about himself than they did about lawnmowers.

“But of course this out of touch pampered billionaire has never touched a lawnmower in his life. Or shopped in a grocery store,” Filipkowski wrote in a social media post on X to his more than 1 million followers.

Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, came to a similar conclusion.

“I guess this is Trump's way of saying he can't figure out how to work a lawnmower,” Baker wrote.

Trump made a similar remark last year, arguing that “in many cases, you need about 185 IQ to turn on a lawnmower now,” though it remains unclear how Trump came to such a belief.

Responding to Trump’s lawnmower rant, Coloradan sports broadcaster Mat Smith asked that “somebody get grandpa to bed,” and Mother Jones D.C. bureau chief David Corn issued a sarcastically celebratory quip regarding the Trump administration’s supposed success in eliminating complicated lawnmowers.

“Our long national nightmare (of overly complicated lawnmowers) is over,” Corn wrote. “Thank God.”