Donald Trump is hardly what most people would call an “environmentalist” or “naturalist.” Nevertheless, he has for years peppered his conversations and public addresses with observations about various animals; probing his top advisers over how badgers “work;” wringing his hands over wind turbines he insists have “killed so many eagles;” and regularly describing his various perceived enemies and antagonists as “dogs.”
But one animal has been the focus of his obsession above all others: sharks. Sharks are “last on my list,” Trump said in 2013, saying that the only things he hated more were “perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”
Sharks are last on my list – other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!July 4, 2013
Trump’s fixation surfaced again this past weekend when, during a rally in Las Vegas he veered off into a tangential anecdote about whether he’d rather die by electrocution in a sinking electric boat, or face a hungry shark waiting for him in nearby waters.
Trump is “obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks,” Stormy Daniels said in 2018. “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.'”
What’s behind Trump’s shark fixation, and how has it contributed to the once — and potentially future — president’s worldview to date?
What does it mean that Trump keeps referencing sharks?
In the moments before her now-infamous tryst with Trump, Daniels recalled that the not-yet-president “made me sit and watch an entire documentary about shark attacks” before anything physical. But if Trump hates sharks as much as he claims to, “why doesn’t he watch, literally, anything else?” Elle asked. Is his addiction to watching shark attack footage “equivalent to the rest of us watching the [then-] president?”
Trump’s repeated interjections of shark-related comments in his public remarks highlight a “beef with the animals” that is “irrational, though not entirely unsurprising,” The Daily Beast said. The former president not only “apparently doesn’t enjoy swimming,” but is allegedly “so disturbed by the sight of blood that he once let an eighty-year-old man bleed profusely at his feet instead of helping him — and at a charity ball, no less.” While Trump’s shark fixation is a “baffling combination of pathetic, relatable, and hilarious,” that same combination makes it strangely “endearing” as well, Slate said. Moreover, the obsession offers an “excellent reflection of what exactly is so completely toxic about the man’s character.” Sharks are “a physical distillation of what Trump hates the most: power in the hands of anyone but him, existential uncertainty, nature.”
Trump’s latest shark tangent — and the nearly identical version of the story he offered late last year in Iowa — came during the part of his speech where he typically “rails against electric cars and claims, falsely, that Joe Biden is dead set on making all military tanks fully electric and nonfunctional,” Intelligencer’s Margaret Hartmann said. Accordingly, in Trump’s worldview, it’s the people advocating for electric vehicles who “are crazy,’ not the guy who mused about being devoured by a shark in the middle of a campaign speech.” It’s a conflation and inversion that may have political ramifications, too. “If voters return Trump to the White House, he would likely deploy a group of officials to work on the boat/battery/shark issue and expect them to report back on their progress,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen said. In Trump’s mind, the issues are intractably — and actionably — related.
How has Trump impacted sharks?
Trump’s hatred of sharks has become a significant part of his personality, but the former president likely doesn’t have much actual direct exposure to his aquatic nemesis. That doesn’t mean, however, that he has not made an indirect impact on shark-like creatures and sharkdom in general. As president, Trump’s frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida regularly disrupted Florida Atlantic University biologist Stephen Kajiura’s research into blacktip sharks, since the “sprawling Palm Beach estate is ‘right along the survey path,'” said Kajiura to The Washington Post.
Conversely, Trump’s anti-shark agitation has prompted a significant “uptick in donations,” for various shark conservation groups, the BBC said in 2018. “One with the message: ‘Because Trump.'”