Donald Trump still doesn’t like sharks.
The former president turned a rant against renewable energy into a wild explanation of how he’d rather die if he were on a sinking electric boat.
“But if I’m sitting down, and that boat’s going down, and I’m on top of a battery, and the water starts flooding in, I’m getting concerned,” Trump said at an event in Iowa in Sunday. “But then I look 10 yards to my left and there’s a shark over there. So I have a choice of electrocution or shark, you know what I’m gonna take? Electrocution. I will take electrocution every single time.”
Any electrocution danger in the water is not exclusive to electric boats. Many gas-powered watercraft also have batteries that provide electric power to on-board appliances. Boaters and swimmers have been injured and died from electric shock drowning over the years in waters around boats and docks, well before the development of electric boats.
The Boat Owners Association of The United States says these incidents are “often the result of faulty wiring and equipment on boats or docks.”
Trump, however, has had a vendetta against renewable energy, attacking everything from electric cars to windmills.
He’s also had a long-running problem with sharks, according to Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had an affair with the then-TV host in 2006.
“He is obsessed with sharks,” Daniels said in an interview with In Touch magazine in 2011. “Terrified of sharks. He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.’”
Trump has denied an affair with Daniels, but his attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 (around £107,000) payment to her in October 2016 to keep quiet about their relationship ahead of the election.
Trump has also inadvertently confirmed her story about sharks.
“I’m not a big fan of sharks,” he said in 2020. “I have people calling me up, ‘Sir, we have a fund to save the shark, it’s called Save The Shark.’ I say ’no thank you, I have other things I can contribute to.”