President Trump compared Elon Musk to legendary inventor Thomas Edison on Wednesday as he showered praise on the Tesla tycoon.

Trump gushed at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland about how the billionaire Tesla CEO has turned around his electric car company and advanced rocket technology.

“He’s one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius,” Trump said of Musk in a CNBC interview. “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.”

The president’s glowing remarks came during a boom period for Tesla, whose stock price has more than doubled over the last three months to $547.20 at Tuesday’s close. The company recently started producing cars at its first factory in China and delivered more vehicles than expected in the fourth quarter of last year.

Trump called Tesla’s comeback run “shocking” as he alluded to the problems that have beset the company in recent years.

The Silicon Valley automaker saw a period of turbulence after Musk tweeted in August 2018 that he was considering taking the company private at $420 a share — a stunt that led the Securities and Exchange Commission to slap Musk and Tesla each with a $20 million penalty. The company’s stock price bottomed out at $176.99 last June before the recent climb.

“You go back a year and they were talking about the end of the company,” Trump told CNBC. “And now all of a sudden they’re talking about these great things.”

Trump predicted that Tesla would build “a very big plant” in the US, “because we help him, so he has to help us.” The company has factories in Fremont, California, Reno, Nevada, and Buffalo, New York.

The Republican president also praised Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, which completed a launch with NASA on Sunday. Trump indicated that he was wowed by the SpaceX rockets that land on their own.

“He likes rockets, and he does good at rockets too, by the way,” Trump said of Musk.