Trump, 80, Keeps Repeating the Same Unhinged Story

MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump has dug up his bonkers old shark tale.

The 80-year-old president was speaking about new executive orders on hunting and fishing at an event in the Rose Garden on Thursday when he stumbled onto an old favorite.

On the campaign trail, the then-Republican nominee developed a taste for a nonsensical story about battery-powered boats and sharks, and more than two years later he stood in the White House and reprised it once more.

He said he had been speaking with a mid-size ship manufacturer and asked them what the biggest challenge they faced with electric boats.

“He said, ‘The weight is enormous.

We can barely carry that much weight,’ because, you know, electric is a much heavier form of propulsion, and they said the weight is enormous.

“I said, ‘Let me ask you a question.

If you get a little leak and the water starts coming in your boat and you’re in—do you get electrocuted or not?’ “He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ And I said, ‘So here’s my question...’ You remember this? I used to say it during the campaign, driving the press crazy, but people found it sort of amusing.

“I said, ‘So if I’m in an electric boat and I see them going down and the water’s pouring in, so I know I’m going to be electrocuted, but five yards away there are sharks, do I take the electrocution or do I go swimming with the sharks?’ And you know what my answer was? I’ll take the electrocution, OK? I’ll take the electrocution—but he didn’t know how to answer the question.

He said, ‘No idea.’” He left people dumbfounded with the same question many times before, in 2023 and 2024.

Multiple times on the trail, he said he had asked a South Carolina boat manufacturer a question in September 2023: If the boat sinks, would the people onboard be electrocuted? Each time, he said the manufacturer said they had never been asked that question before.

It also came with the same caveat: that if passengers jumped, they would be eaten by sharks.

“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,” he said to a Las Vegas audience in June 2024.

He said he 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.” Again, he revealed that the man said that “No one has ever asked me that question.” Trump: It must be because of my relationship with M.I.T., very smart, I say, what would happen if the boat sank, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater….