While Donald Trump occasionally rolls out new lines for his rally speeches and interviews based on a hot topic of the day, his rants have largely stayed the same for many years. One topic Trump has brought up at nearly every appearance is his hatred of wind turbines, which he calls “windmills.”
His obsession with wind turbines—which he blames for a variety of domestic and foreign policy ills—originates from a dispute he had with the Scottish Parliament over windmills near his golf course outside Aberdeen, Scotland, two decades ago.
Trump has floated many conspiracies and criticisms of “windmills,” most of them completely inane. He also does this even though it typically doesn’t provoke a strong reaction from his MAGA rally crowds—which is a bit unusual.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump is always very responsive to his rally audiences, and when something isn’t enthusiastically received, he typically will cut it out of future riffs. Not so with the windmills. While many of his standard rally lines are certain to get the faithful on their feet cheering Dear Leader, the windmill lines are generally met with stony silence by people who obviously couldn’t care less and don’t share his maniacal obsession.
In a speech to the Republican National Congressional Committee on April 2, 2019, Trump blamed windmills for causing cancer. This wildly incorrect assertion is based on an obscure and false internet conspiracy theory that the sound from them mutates cells in the human body. In the same speech, he said that a windmill near your house or business causes the value of the property to drop by 75 percent. One month before that, he gave a speech in Ohio where he said it would decrease values by 65 percent. (There have been many studies conducted on this claim, which show that property values are not significantly affected by nearby windmills.)
Donald Trump speaks at the National Republican Congressional Committee Annual Spring Dinner on April 2, 2019, in Washington, DC.
Jim Watson/GettyTrump also often blames windmills for killing birds. He gives different variations of this theme of avian mass murder. This rant from a December 16, 2023, rally speech is fairly representative:
“They kill all our birds. If you want to see a bird cemetery, go under a windmill sometime. You’ll see birds like you never saw. If you love birds, you’ll start to weep.”
While it is true that windmills do kill birds (the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates about a quarter-million per year), that number is far less than other man-made obstacles, such as power lines, vehicles, and buildings.
Trump claims that windmills hurt the U.S. economy because, he claims, all the world’s windmills are manufactured in China and Germany. This is also false. Over 100,000 Americans are employed by the wind industry. Wind turbine manufacturing in the U.S. is dominated by General Electric, Siemens, and Vestas. Vestas is a Danish company with a major plant in Colorado. GE manufactures turbines in China, Arkansas, and North Dakota.
Trump has complained that wind turbines are killing whales, claiming that only one dead whale washed ashore in the U.S. over the past 50 years—but last year there were 12. He claims that the sound from the turbines is causing mental illness in whales, leading them to die prematurely. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) debunked this conspiracy theory last year, stating that “there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths.”
Trump has also blamed windmills for inflation, claiming that a reason for inflation in the U.S. is the increased cost of energy caused by President Joe Biden “putting up windmills all over the place.” After Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, he was asked on the Nelk brothers’ podcast about how he thought the war would play out and how it would end. This was his response:
“We are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills, they don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes, and yet the environmentalists love the windmills. I’ve been preaching this for years. The windmills. And I had them way down. But the windmills are the most expensive energy you can have. They don’t work. By the way, they last a period of ten years. By the time they start rusting and rotting all over the place, nobody ever takes them down. They just go onto the next piece of prairie or land.”
Again, this was in response to a question about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Of course, Trump doesn’t care about birds, the mental health of whales, or other people’s home values. His unhealthy obsession with windmills is very personal.
It all goes back to his defeat in the U.K. courts over his attempt to block 11 wind turbines from being constructed near his golf course in Aberdeen.
Donald Trump visits Trump International Golf Links on June 25, 2016 in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty/Jeff J Mitchell/GettyTrump first learned about Scotland’s plans to construct a wind farm near a property he purchased in 2003. He fumed about it at the time, “I am not thrilled. I want to see the ocean, I do not want to see windmills.” When construction began in 2011 to build a golf course on the property, Trump filed a formal complaint against the Scottish government, complaining about “the horrible idea of building ugly wind turbines directly off Aberdeen’s beautiful coastline.”
When the wind farm began to be installed in 2013, Trump filed a lawsuit and vowed to “spend whatever monies are necessary” to get them removed. Trump lost the case at every level, and the U.K. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal in 2015.
Trump’s war on windmills in his political speeches began shortly thereafter.
In his deposition for the fraud case brought against him in New York by Attorney General Letitia James, Trump discussed his testimony before the Scottish Parliament where he lobbied them to halt construction of the wind farm. He said in his deposition:
“In Scotland, and in large places in Europe, and also in the United States, they’re foolishly putting up wind turbines all over the place. And I happen to be, in my own way, a very good environmentalist and I think, you know, it’s bad for the environment…They put a wind turbine right on top of a hole. It was crazy. It was a great course.”
Trump then claimed that the reason he overvalued this Aberdeen property by at least double its fair market value in his financial statements was because he refused to move forward with plans to develop the property to protest the wind turbine.
Despite Trump’s claim that he hates windmills because of his love of birds and whales, the reality is that he couldn’t stand the fact that his view of the ocean from his property in Scotland was affected in a way that displeased him. Then, the fact that Scotland rejected his bullying tactics and stood up to him further incensed him.
As we know from Trump’s election fraud conspiracies, even when it is in his own best interests to move on and let something go, he is simply not capable of doing that. And so he continues tilting at windmills.
Ron Filipkowski is the Editor-in-Chief of MeidasTouch.com and host of the Uncovered podcast.
