Experts Spot An Alarming Comment In This Otherwise Ridiculous Trump Statement: ‘He’s Not Joking’

While hosting hunters and outdoor industry officials in the Rose Garden on Thursday, President Donald Trump joked he could’ve banned fishing and driven Johnny Morris, the founder of Bass Pro Shops, out of business.

The president had just signed two executive ordersloosening some hunting and fishing restrictions, expanding hunting access on federal lands and authorizing the use of traditional lead ammunition, which former President Joe Biden had banned.

“The power of this office is crazy,” Trump said. “I could have banned fishing and driven Johnny right the hell out of business. OK, I think I’m going to do that. Just maybe a quick order, just for a day or two, till he calls me and he says, ‘Please, President, please, you’re putting me out of business, sir.’”

Morris attended the White House event, and Bass Pro Shops did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment at the time of reporting. Trump and Morris are friends; Morris contributed $200,000 to Trump’s 2020 campaign, according to Forbes.

The joke caught some attention on social media, even though experts told HuffPost the president does not have the power or authority to actually make such a decision.

“There is no plausible basis on which he could ban fishing throughout the U.S.,” said Ilya Somin, author and law professor at George Mason University. “But it does sort of reflect his attitude that he can do whatever he wants.”

Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, agreed that there is truly no legal way to allow the president to simply ban fishing throughout the U.S. but what the statement represents could be concerning.

“It’s tempting to dismiss this sort of statement as joking or puffery, but I also think there’s a deliberate effort underway to convince the public that there are truly no limits on presidential power,” Shaw said.

Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, told HuffPost that Trump’s “jokes” are “a great trick.”

“He can always say he is joking and his opponents are humorless,” Nyhan said. “But statements like that one can help to normalize extreme abuses of presidential power.”

Trump allies have historically dismissed this kind of scrutiny as evidence that critics and opponents do not understand humor.

“The President was joined by 100 of America’s hunters and anglers to celebrate the signing of two executive orders that rolled back burdensome Biden regulations, opened up access to public lands and restored common sense. President Trump is known and loved for his personable and funny remarks,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told HuffPost.

It’s not the first time Trump has mentioned the “power of the office” alongside an offhand remark that gets treated as a joke, even though it echoes his more serious claims.

For example, in January, Trump told Reuters, “We shouldn’t even have an election” while commenting on midterm losses. Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately said this was a joke and he was “speaking facetiously.” Experts say this pattern is part of what makes his rhetoric worth taking seriously.

Somin also pointed to physical actions the president has taken and emphasized they should focus on more than the “jokes” he makes.

“His claims that essentially he can impose any tariffs he wants, any nation, any amount for any reason; his claims that he can declare an invasion any time he wants … his claims that he has the power to take federal stakes and private companies of any kind, his imposition of legal export taxes, his starting of war without congressional authorization, all of that, to use the nearly unlimited nature of his claims to presidential power, and it’s vastly more important than what he says in a joke,” Somin said. “The bottom line is he’s not joking.”

(However, regarding Trump imposing tariffs, the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed under the IEEPA earlier this year.)

Whether the White House ever tests the theory that it could ban fishing in the U.S.—an industry that generates around $319 billion annually, according to NOAA Fisheries Economics data—Somin said test cases on the administration’s power limits are already underway.