SHARK WEEK

Trump’s Shark-Phobia Gets the Best of Him During Meandering Rally Rant

The former president was hosting a campaign rally in Las Vegas, when, in typical Trump fashion, he veered off script into well-traveled waters.

Former President Donald Trump has a storied history when it comes to his hatred of sharks—and it was something he wanted to touch on during his Sunday rally in Las Vegas.

While rambling about electric cars and trucks, Trump reminded the crowd that “they” want to make all boats electric too, an apparent reference to Democratic politicians who have expressed no such desire, at least publicly. Trump cited a recent conversation he had with a South Carolina boat salesman as the source for the claim.

The idea of an electric boat tilled the soil for an obvious hypothetical to pop-up in Trump’s mind: “What would happen if the boat sank?” he posed to the businessman in his recounting.

“The [boat’s] battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there, by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately,” Trump told his perplexed crowd. Trump then recalled a person who he heard trying to justify a shark attack on a young woman because the shark confused her leg with “sushi.”

After taking the long road, Trump asked the businessman, “do I get electrocuted… or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he did not know the answer.” According to Trump, the businessman replied, “no one has ever asked me that question.”

Trump is famously no fan of sharks.

Stormy Daniels, the adult film star whose hush-money payments from Trump formed the backbone of his recent conviction on felony business fraud charges, claimed that when the pair met up at the Beverly Hills Hotel to carry out their 2007 affair the soon-to-be U.S. president was too engrossed in Discovery Channel’s Shark Week programming to acknowledge her arrival.

She later claimed that he expressed a wish that “all the sharks die”—a sentiment he tweeted about prior to his presidency several times.

“Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks—and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone,” he wrote in 2013.

“Sharks are last on my list - other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!” he added later the same day.

At his rally on Sunday, Trump perhaps unsurprisingly opted to “take electrocution, every single time” over a hypothetical death by shark attack.

Trump concluded his story by reassuring his reasonably lost crowd that he was going to “end” electric boats and trucks.

This is by no means the first time Trump’s hatred of sharks has poked its head out during a campaign rally.

In October 2023, he reiterated a very similar story where he posed the same hypothetical about an electric boat sinking a short distance from a shark, which he concluded by saying he would choose electrocution over a shark attack.

During his 2020 campaign run, sharks were also front and center in his mind.

“They were saying the other night: the shark! They were saying, ‘Oh, sharks! We have to protect them,’” Trump mused to his crowd at an August 2020 campaign rally in Pennsylvania. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait.’ They actually want to remove all the seals in order to save the shark. I said, ‘Wait a minute. Don’t you have it the other way around?’”

Trump added he “wasn’t a big fan of sharks,” which could cost him some votes from all the people who call him up requesting that he fund a shark-related charity called ‘Save the Shark.’

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Owen LavineBreaking News Intern

Rachel OldingEditor

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.