Brendan Nyhan: uh — Subium • Bluesky web client

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 1 mo

uh

Trump is now ranting about batteries and shark attacks. I dare you to try to make sense of this.

Aaron Rupar (@aaron.rupar) on Threadswww.threads.net Trump is now ranting about batteries and shark attacks. I dare you to try to make sense of this.

I figured out by the very end this is about EVs.

But he's more scared of sharks than EVs, so he wanted to make that clear. His questions are getting more "No one has asked me that before!" by the day.

There are people who say there's no such thing as a stupid question, and I present the video and transcript above as proof that those people are absolutely wrong.

Total nonsense, only performative acts, no intelligence or logic to it.

I hope Dems have operatives going around and filming him and making ads out of this.

Of course they don't, that would be ungentlemanly and excessively divisive

Didn't he do this rant in 2020 too?

Yes, this is a “greatest hit”.

People flocking to Trump, with tears in their eyes, saying "Sir, sir!! We don't know wtf you're talking about!"

The amazing thing is that he's telling this story because he thinks it's an illustration of his genius.

If you're like me and thought that this had to be fake, no, it's real. www.rawstory.com/trump-senile...

'He is senile': Trump's 'batteries and shark attacks' rant causes mental health questionswww.rawstory.com Donald Trump on Sunday ranted at a rally about batteries and shark attacks, leading the internet to question the ex-president's mental capacity. Trump on Sunday spoke in Las Vegas, at one point veerin...

The truly weird thing is that he gave the same rant last October.

Trump Reveals He’d Rather Die by Electrocution Than by Sharknymag.com During an Iowa campaign stop, Trump ranted about his nautical archenemies. You may think it makes more sense in context, but I assure you it doesn’t.

I'm reminded of a meme from some old Nickelodeon cartoon. "If I had a nickel for every time this happened...well I'd only have two nickels but it's still really strange that it's happened twice".

That's from Phineas and Ferb, which is Disney. The original is "If I had a nickel for every time I was doomed by a puppet, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice."

Ah okay. I'd only seen the meme, never the cartoon, and it's been years since I've seen that. I'd just assumed it was one of the Nickelodeon cartoons that came and went long after I'd passed the age range for the channel.

I caught it because my kid was the right age at the time, but we still watch it on occasion. It's clever and fun.

Interesting how P&F changed the expression from meaning "something exceedingly commonplace" to "something weird and unusual". Bugs Bunny did something similar to Nimrod, changing it from "mighty Biblical hunter" to "feckless idiot".

Well there goes my idea that this was somehow him bitching about electric vehicles.

I think the point he’s trying to make is “EV boats would sink” but apparently he has a morbid fear of sharks and poor executive function so he gets pulled off script.

I think he's saying "EV boats would electrocute you if they sank"??? As an argument against... EV cars? Which famously both sink, and expose you to sharks.

Would he feel the same way if the battery paralyzed him but left him conscious for the shark attack?

I remembered but not exactly when or where. Was wondering why everyone suddenly thought it was new.

I was about to say I thought it sounded familiar!!

Who amongst us hasn't bitten off a young lady's leg because of the fact that we weren't hungry but we misunderstood who she was?

I've been on the fence but this just makes sense, I'm going with Trump

I mean, the sharks are going to eat you in any case. Might as well die first, quickly, by electrocution. Gotta hand it to him. He thought this through.

Wouldn't the sharks get electrocuted, too??

Ah, so now do we electrocute ourselves AND the sharks, or try to escape both electrocution and the sharks by leaping off the boat before it goes under? A diabolical dilemma! This Trump guy is giving us much to think about…

What if the sharks are full of cocaine and are feeling no pain? They've got nothing to lose then.

The liberal media is suppressing all the massive fish-kills whenever a boat sinks.

No, stay on the fence - it’s above the water line so you’re safe from electricity/sharks

just punch the sharks bro

Is this supposed to be an argument against transitioning to battery-powered boats from fossil fuel-powered boats? He's actually pointing out a previously unrecognized benefit of battery-powered boats: If you sink near a shark, you can maybe choose to be electrocuted instead of eaten.

This is the way.

I suspect that, having talked about EVs, he transitioned into talking about his opposition to the electric systems on the Ford-class aircraft carriers, & how he finds electric systems unreliable & dangerous. It has been a talking point for him for years, but it grows increasingly garbled

Wouldn’t the battery electrocute the shark, leaving you free to drown?

But he didn’t mention the possibility that this battery churning out all this electricity is going to electrocute the shark first

I don’t think he understood this at any point, but sharks do hate artificial electricity and tend to attack it. but that just means fortifying the boat really

This is why photographers always go down in a shark proof cage

I think his brain's dribbling out of his ears

"We're going to end it for trucks." Did anyone tell Elon?

Elon who?

Elon Tesla, obviously.

Nikola Tesla, I believe.

Did you know that if you steal a Tesla, it becomes an Edison?

😂👍 Exactly 😂

All that free election support Elon gives him and he's gonna stop the gravy train.

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