Donald Trump rants about sharks when speaking in Nevada where there is no ocean

Why was Trump talking about sharks at a Nevada campaign event in June, 2024?

Echo report (excerpts) by Philip Bump published in the Washington Post:  The former president’s riff on sea life and electric boats confused a lot of people, speaking in Nevada to a sweltering hot audience because, apparantly, the Trump campaign cannot afford to rent an air conditioned venue for their small donation campaign supporters.

It is possible that the sheer weirdness of this story has already led to your seeing it. Transcripts of Trump's 500-plus-word riff spread over social media, as people tried to parse it like the final exam of a fifth-grade English class. If you didn't see it, allow me to offer an abridged version.

The story began with Trump describing a conversation with a boat manufacturer in South Carolina. (This was the person who purportedly referred to him as “sir.”) Trump offered more familiarity with boats than his audience — again, in the desert city of Las Vegas

I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’” Trump said.

Then Trump went on a tangent about sharks and shark attacks. In the abstract, this was just odd, given that — just as a reminder! — this was Trump trying to convince a lot of Nevadans to vote for him for president. But his aversion to sharks is well-established — and, in fact, overlaps with his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan.

The criminal trial in New York centered on porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 — he denies they had sex — and the hush money payment made to her by Trump’s attorney before the 2016, election. 

In a 2011,interview with In Touch Weekly that was published after the details of the alleged encounter between Trump and Daniels were made public in 2018, she recounted his disdain for sharks. 

Daniels explained that one of their encounters overlapped with the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming. As the two sat in Trump’s hotel room, he volunteered how much he hated sharks and wished they all would die. That his central concern related to a sinking boat would be sharks certainly bolsters the idea that Daniels was telling the truth.  #StormyDanielsStrong❗