President Donald Trump is growing increasingly publicly unhinged as the time of his tenure passes, and this weekend at a summit of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, he took his belligerence to a bizarre new extreme. He ranted and raved about windmills and the universe, veering between insisting, in his words, that he doesn’t understand wind and sounding an alarm about, uh, “bird graveyards” that he says are at the bottoms of windmills. Was the argument supposed to turn someone against wind energy? Maybe! What’s clear is that in the name of political expedience, the people around the president have stepped back and allowed a dangerously unhinged, volatile man to have free reign.
He babbled:
‘I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody. It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly — very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous, if you’re into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint. Fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether its in China, Germany, its going into the air. Our air, their air, everything. Right?’
Maybe! A more decisive answer could no doubt be provided if he even attempted to tie his argument to any kind of logically coherent reflection of reality. The weekend meltdown about, uh, wind is on par with the rant he delivered in which he insisted that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer. It does not. It’s unclear what physical or biological mechanism would even allow that to happen.
This weekend, he continued nonetheless:
‘They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life… A windmill will kill many bald eagles. It’s true!.. Why is it okay for these windmills to destroy the bird population?’
Watch:
Trump’s nuts rant about wind energy: “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much… Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes & everything.” pic.twitter.com/DvkJq9NbWg
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 23, 2019
It’s unclear where he even got this idea, although he’s definitely pulled claims out of thin air plenty of times before. For example, he has claimed over and over again that he has a 94 percent approval rating in the Republican Party, and he has also completely left out even an attempt at a citation for that claim over again and over again. It’s unclear where it came from.
In response, activist Matt Ortega quipped:
‘Trump says he doesn’t understand wind then proved it.’
Trump says he doesn’t understand wind then proved it. https://t.co/C52ItQpMwt
— Matt Ortega (@MattOrtega) December 23, 2019
Author Matt Novak added:
‘It’d be almost funny if it wasn’t coming from the most powerful person in the world—a man who’s setting energy policy while climate change makes the world less inhabitable for all of us.’
It’s true — these rants are different from the average anonymous social media loudmouth because they’re coming from the president of the United States. Under Trump’s leadership, which has included rollback after rollback of environmental protection regulations, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States have been believed to be increasing — even as he carries on publicly with his insistence that other countries should pick up the tab of dealing with climate change.
