“The Trump Shark-Sinking-Boat-Battery Thing Was Notable” Maddow Critiques Former President’s Disjointed Comments
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MSNBC host Rachel Maddow delivered a sharp critique of former President Donald Trump following his bizarre remarks during a recent speech in Las Vegas, Nevada. Maddow joined colleague Nicolle Wallace to dissect the speech that left even Republicans puzzled.
Over the weekend, Trump revisited a story he initially shared in October 2023, but this time, his comments were even more disjointed, attracting significant attention. The former president claimed that electric vehicles are dangerous because they can electrocute people if they come into contact with water. He painted a scenario involving a boat powered by batteries sinking and the passengers facing electrocution—a notion Maddow found absurd, given that all vehicles, including boats, have batteries for various functions.
Trump’s hypothetical situation where he must choose between a sinking boat and a shark “10 yards away” culminated in his preference for electrocution over confronting the shark. The comments, made in the landlocked desert state of Nevada during extreme heat, led to mockery and confusion. This rally, similar to a previous one in Arizona, saw several attendees hospitalized due to the blistering temperatures.
Maddow noted the challenge of covering Trump’s speeches on cable news. “I tried starting — started trying to do, is I tried to read the closed-captioning auto-generated transcripts of Trump’s speeches,” Maddow explained. “I don’t think we should be carrying them live. It’s knowing what he is saying. And it’s worth conveying that when it is something dangerous, when it’s new, when it’s news-making, and when it is nonsense. The Trump shark sinking-boat-battery thing was notable because it was completely gibberish. It’s not the first time he has done it.”
She pointed out that even those present at the event were baffled by Trump’s digression. “The fact that he chose to make this digression in landlocked Las Vegas telling people about the risk of sharks, like, where are the Las Vegas sharks? Are there freshwater sharks? Are they in the fountains in Las Vegas?” Maddow laughed.
Wallace added that Trump frequently touts his mental acuity, often referencing the MoCA Test in interviews. “I think he’s taken it two dozen times on TV — and we started cutting, and we found ten, and then we just stopped counting. I mean, he’s obsessed with talking about his own [mental] acuity in a campaign that seems obsessed with talking about Joe Biden’s age,” Wallace remarked.
Reflecting on Trump’s rhetoric, Maddow highlighted its incoherence and occasional violent overtones. “The shark-boat thing, to me, I think it has two points of resonance,” she said. “And one of them is, what the heck is he talking about? This is weird. This doesn’t make any sense. He’s really, really, frequently incoherent. And when he’s not incoherent, he’s speaking in terms that are like pornographically violent when he is trying to rile up his audience.”
Wallace mentioned that even Trump ally Sean Hannity has suggested the former president should withdraw from the first debate, underscoring the complex and often bewildering nature of Trump’s public statements.
