‘The dumbest government tweet ever’: Dept of Energy has somehow never heard of batteries

It’s genuinely impressive how, each and every day, the Trump administration breaks through to an exciting new depth of stupidity. Usually, it’s the big man himself blathering away about whatever’s on his disintegrating mind, but bringing up the rear is an inexhaustible phalanx of MAGA morons ready and willing to say stuff you’d ordinarily assume was parody.

For today’s example, let’s zip over to the Department of Energy’s X feed, where the mouth-breather running it came out with a truly inane comment about renewable energy. Yup, this social media guru spotted something simple the entire scientific community missed:

Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and the wind is not blowing. https://t.co/61rquLn5bg

— U.S. Department of Energy (@ENERGY) September 5, 2025

You can just imagine all those technicians, scientists, and investors thumping their heads with anger as they realize this person is right! Solar and wind won’t generate electricity when it’s not sunny and windy! How could we have been so blind?! Quick, build 20 more coal power plants!

Or, uh, maybe just use a battery? As almost every reply and an inevitable community note pointed out: “Batteries allow electricity to be stored and used at a different time than when it is generated”, which is up there with “twenty dollars can buy many peanuts” as a brainwave.

And indeed, renewable energy sources do indeed store the electricity they generate inside lithium-ion batteries, whether that’s home energy systems or grid-scale storage. Stuff that, y’know, you’d expect people at the Department of Energy to know about.

Just send them back to kindergarten and try again…

Replies were, predictably, scathing:

I wish I could say the same because it seems they constantly find a way to outdo themselves immediately after. So give it about 2ish minutes and one of our other government accounts will outdo this post.

— insert_username_here (@usernamehere72) September 7, 2025

unknow chinese technology????

— boolean (@BooleanNotFalse) September 7, 2025

Remember, magnets don't work when they get wet. Another gem from Trump.

— SNAFU (@DeLaHay14534) September 8, 2025

That said, this is merely the dumbest thing we’ll hear from the Trump administration today. Presumably, we’ll soon hear Trump’s goobers at the weather agency wondering where the sun goes at night (a Democrat plot?!), ICE announcing a plan to crack down on aliens by banning flying saucers, and the Department of Agriculture having a real bad time trying to milk a bull.

All this is objectively funny stuff, but the smile goes away real fast when you remember these knuckle-draggers will be in power for the next four years. Oh well, at least we had some laughs before the New Dark Age.