President Trump aired his grievances Saturday against a favorite enemy – wind turbines.
‘A windmill will kill many bald eagles,’ Trump told a group of youngsters at a Turning Point USA event in West Palm Beach. ‘And if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent of the price.’
Trump has long ranted about windmills – usually as he’s going after the Green New Deal – and in the past has claimed that the turbines cause cancer, which they don’t.
President Trump went on another tirade against windmills Saturday, claiming that they ruin people’s home values, kill bald eagles and are an eyesore
President Trump said one of the reasons he dislikes windmills is that they often are made by different manufacturers and then the colors don’t match
He also repeated the false claim that windmills are slaughtering bald eagles. Trump first made that claim when he was a candidate for the White House in 2016
The Green New Deal triggered his tirade Saturday as well.
After suggesting that the Democrats supporting the Green New Deal wanted to rid the world of airplanes, which would cancel Hawaii – ‘Say goodbye to Hawaii,’ Trump teased – he turned to wind.
‘We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind,’ Trump said. ‘You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody I know.’
Trump called wind power ‘expensive,’ said the turbines were ‘made in China and Germany’ mostly. ‘Very few [are] made here, almost none,’ he claimed. He also said manufacturing them created ‘tremendous fumes.’
‘Gases are spewing into the atmosphere,’ Trump said. ‘You talk about the carbon footprint – fumes are spewing into the air. Right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything – right?’
Once the wind turbines are erected, Trump continued, they diminished house prices and killed birds.
‘You want to see a bird graveyard?’ he asked the crowd. ‘Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life,’ he said to laughs.
The president insisted, again, that windmills were hacking up bald eagles in California.
‘If you shoot a bald eagle they want to put you in jail for 10 years,’ Trump commented. ‘A windmill will kill many bald eagles. It’s true.’
Trump first made the bald eagle claim when he was a candidate for the presidency in May 2016.
Politifact rated it ‘mostly false’ because bald eagle deaths ‘appear to be rare.’ Another species of eagle,
‘Trump is correct that California wind farms are a threat to eagles but not on the magnitude he suggested,’ Politifact said. ‘The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.’
The president has continued to link bald eagle deaths to windmills anyway.
On Saturday, Trump ended his windmill tirade by talking about how they’re an eyesore.
‘I’ve seen the most beautiful fields, farms, fields – most gorgeous things you’ve ever seen, and then you have these ugly things going up,’ the president said. ‘And sometimes they’re made by different companies.’
‘And so you’ll see like a few windmills made by one company: General Electric. And then you’ll see a few made by Siemens, and you’ll see a few made by some other guy that doesn’t have 10 cents … they’re all different shades of colors,’ Trump continued.
Trump described one as ‘orange-white.’
‘It’s my favorite color, orange,’ he added, earning applause.
He also said windmills were quick to look dated.
‘And you know what they don’t tell you about windmills? After 10 years, they look like hell,’ he said. ‘You know, they start to get tired, old. You got to replace them. A lot of times, people don’t replace them.’
He also suggested the government spent too much money propping up the industry.
‘They need massive subsidy from the government in order to make it,’ Trump said. ‘It’s really a terrible thing.’