A Trump shark’s tale: Whether to be eaten or electrocuted

It was then that Trump claims he posed the “very smart” question the manufacturer said he had never before been asked: If the boat sinks under the weight of its own battery, couldn’t the boaters be electrocuted? And worse, if they jumped off the boat to avoid electrocution, might they then be devoured by a shark?

“You know what I’m going to take? Electrocution,” Trump said when he unveiled the story for the first time at a rally in October in Ottumwa, Iowa. “I will take electrocution every single time.”

The riff has all the hallmarks of a classic Trumpian yarn — full of fabrication, riddled with illogic, defying the laws of physics and, by turns, rambling and hyperbolic, humorous and head-scratching.

It is a whale of a tale, and listeners could be forgiven for thinking they’re going to need a bigger boat to handle all of the exaggerations and flights of fancy.

Electric vehicle and electric boat experts say that, like any boat or ship, the battery of a properly built electric boat is unlikely to cause it to sink and that even if the vessel did take on water for some reason, safety standards make it unlikely that anyone would be at risk for electrocution.

“We have cargo ships that carry thousands of tons of cargo, so based on Archimedes’ principle — you just have to displace as much water as the weight of the battery pack,” said Jason Siegel, a research scientist in the University of Michigan’s mechanical engineering department who also is the education director for the university’s Electric Vehicle Center.

As for the threat of electrocution, Siegel added that EV lithium-based batteries “are inherently more dangerous than a 12-volt lead acid battery you’d typically find on a boat — but because they are more dangerous, they have more safety precautions designed on the package so there’s virtually no way you can come in contact with the battery.”

Siegel explained that the risk of electrocution with high-voltage systems normally occurs when “you become part off an electrical circuit between the positive and negative terminals of a battery.” So it’s possible, he said, that if “you just happened to lay across the battery pack, maybe you’d be in trouble.” But an individual would have to come in contact with both terminals of the battery — and these battery systems “are designed in a way that you don’t have access to the electrical connections of the battery pack.”

In a text message, the Trump campaign declined to answer whether Trump truly believes his claims about electric boats and, if not, why he is continuing to repeat falsehoods about them.

“The Washington Post is a pathetic institution no longer worth the paper it’s printed on and they should be embarrassed for wasting time writing a story about boats sinking when our country is sinking from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s failed leadership,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt wrote.

Yet the former president has persisted in repeating the unlikely narrative.

Trump rolled out the story yet again at a rally this past weekend in Grand Rapids, Mich. — his first public appearance with his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), following the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week.

“The press kills me all the time,” Trump said, before forging ahead with this favored hypothetical scenario. “If there’s a shark about 10 yards away, do I get electrocuted or do I go with the shark … because I will take electrocution all day long.”

It was hardly the first time Trump had recounted the tale.

“I said, ‘How bad would it be if you went all electric?’” Trump said in November at an event in Houston, segueing from concerns about the Army wanting to build electric tanks straight into his boat riff, and again referring to his alleged conversation at the South Carolina boat manufacturer. “He said, ‘Well, the one thing is it’s very heavy, so we don’t think the boat can float.’”

“So they’re off to a bad start,” Trump said, to laughter.

The former president continued: “I said, ‘What would happen if you’re out at sea and your boat sinks and you have a whole big electric deal under you — would you get electrocuted?’ He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’”

Finally, Trump reached his denouement — the Hobson’s choice between electrocution and a shark attack, perhaps more at home at a slumber party game of “Would You Rather?” than in the words of a major-party presidential candidate.

“So if that boat goes down and you have a shark that’s 10 yards away, so you have a choice of a shark or being electrocuted — I will take electrocution every single day. Do we agree?” Trump concluded. The former president’s tale of “The Old Man and the Shark” also offers a submersible journey into the deep recesses of Trump’s psyche, where institutions — like marine safety standards — can’t be trusted and abiding fears — like sharks — loom large.

Trump has long disdained sharks, regularly expressing his unease toward the ocean predators. On July 4, 2013, before he was a presidential candidate, Trump tweeted, “Sorry folks, I’m just not a fan of sharks — and don’t worry, they will be around long after we are gone.” Just minutes later, he returned to the topic again with another missive, writing, “Sharks are last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”

As president, he again reaffirmed his dislike of the finned underwater carnivores, telling a confused Pennsylvania crowd: “It’s true — I’m not a big fan of sharks either,” before worrying aloud he might have alienated the shark demographic: “I don’t know, how many votes am I going to lose?”

Another claim of Trump’s shark obsession came from adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who said in a 2018 interview with In Touch Weekly that when she met him at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006, she found Trump watching the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, describing him as both “terrified of” and “obsessed with” sharks. Trump this year was found guilty of 34 counts of business fraud for covering up a hush money payment to Daniels to hide his relationship with her during the 2016 election.

“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,’” Daniels told the magazine.

Trump’s recent shark’s tale began in late 2023, following a September visit to Sportsman Boats, a boat manufacturer in Summerville, S.C., where Trump claims he first heard the concerns about electric boats. Sportsman Boats did not return several calls requesting comment.

Less than a week later, on the first day of October, Trump recounted the story in Ottumwa, Iowa, for the first time, repeating it twice more that month as he campaigned across the state, and again in Texas in November. Each retelling remained remarkably consistent: The concerns from the boat manufacturer, the former president’s question about the threat of electrocution and then the surprise twist of a shark just “10 yards” away.

He revived the yarn in June in Las Vegas. But this time, the riff seemed to come out of nowhere, and was even more circuitous than usual.

At one point, he paused to opine on shark attacks generally — “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, you notice that?” he asked — before digressing into an aside about sharks that “bit off the young lady’s leg” because they “misunderstood who she was.” (Trump seemed to be referring to a trio of shark attacks two days prior at western Florida beaches that injured three swimmers, including two teenage girls.)

According to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File, there were 69 unprovoked shark bites on humans and 22 provoked bites in 2023, the last year for which the file has released data. But Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida, said 2024 “is absolutely spot-on for an average year” and that shark attacks have consistently been declining over the years.

Nonetheless, it was after this Las Vegas retelling that Trump’s shark diatribe went viral. “Trump Jumps the Shark,” blared several headlines. “Cognitive Decline? Trump Short-Circuits During Bonkers Rant,” wrote the New Republic, adding, “The former president glitched during a tirade about sharks and batteries.”

The absurdity of Trump’s hypothetical is only heightened by his incorrect facts and assumptions.

Craig Scholten, vice president of technical for the American Boat and Yacht Council, which writes safety standards for the marine industry, said the weight of a battery for an electric boat is handled similarly to a traditional fuel tank.

“A battery bank on an electric boat is not different than a gasoline or diesel fuel system, and the weight of the fuel is determined in the boat weight and then there’s a safety margin that is put in place,” Scholten said, explaining why an electric boat will remain buoyant and float.

Elaine Buckberg, who served as chief economist of General Motors and oversaw the company’s long-term forecasting for vehicles — including the EV market — said that when GM did an analysis on a hypothetical electric pontoon boat, none of Trump’s concerns came up.

“At no time in any of those discussions did I hear any concerns about safety,” said Buckberg, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. “I heard nothing about it could sink from the battery weight. I heard nothing about risk of electrocution.”

After his Las Vegas event, even Trump seemed to realize that his story was being mocked, and he defended it later in June at a gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C.

“You heard my story on the boat with the shark, right? I got killed on that. They thought I was rambling — I’m not rambling,” he said, before launching anew into the watery depths of his riff.

This time, Trump became especially animated as he imagined “a shark about 10 yards over there” — gesturing with his left hand at the invisible predator — and, conjuring images of “Dr. Strangelove,” again asked, to laughter, “Would I immediately have to abandon or could I ride the electric down?”

“It’s actually not crazy,” he concluded. “It’s sort of a smart story, right?”

And for all the tale’s twists and turns, at least one thing remains remarkably clear: Trump would definitely prefer electrocution to a shark encounter.

Others, however, weren’t so sure.

“I mean, I’d be staying on the boat as long as I could,” Siegel said, when pressed on Trump’s fictitious scenario.

Then, he mused further: “Depends on how big the shark is,” he said. “I’ve seen some pretty scary-looking bull sharks, and some pretty benign-looking sand sharks.”

Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.