'The wind is bullshit': Trump in new tirade against green power
Former president has long-running vendetta against wind turbines, possibly dating back to feud over their effect on views from his Scottish golf course
US Presidential candidate Donald Trump took his campaign against wind power to a bizarre new level at a Pennsylvania rally, describing it as “bullshit” and lashing out at “rusting and disgusting” turbines he claimed are collapsing everywhere.
Former President Trump has a long history of making bizarre and false claims about “windmills,” as he calls them, possibly arising from a long-running feud over their impact on the views from his Scottish golf club. But his latest comments stand out even by his standards.
Speaking at a rally in the city of Scranton last night, President Joe Biden's hometown, with less than a month until the US presidential election, Trump first took aim at Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for her role as one of the “original sponsors of the socialist green new scam.”
Vice President Harris has been part of an administration led by President Joe Biden that has pushed through a raft of pro-environment policies, not least the landmark Inflation Reduction Act that put $369bn of subsidies on the table for renewable energy.
But Trump claimed she ultimately wants to spend $94tn to “clean the air so that when China comes here and takes us over, they'll have a nice clear atmosphere,” not elaborating on where he got this astronomical sum from or what it specifically relates to.
Turning his attention to turbines, Trump said: “I flew over some of those beautiful windmills, they're falling down by the way.”
“They're all over the place. That gorgeous, beautiful Pennsylvania countryside they got these big ugly suckers hanging down.”
“They're rusting and rotting, half of them weren’t spinning and the ones that were, were going so slow… it’s not too windy but you know they're going like slow the other ones were just dead.”
He continued to describe them as “rusting and disgusting looking”, going on to make a well-worn false claim that wind power is the “most expensive form of energy.”
“The wind, the wind it sounds so wonderful,” he said. “The wind is bullshit.”
“It's horrible… it's just too expensive it doesn't work,” he added.
Trump claimed that Harris would ban fracking in Pennsylvania, something she has denied, with the method of extracting gas from the ground having become somewhat of a culture war issue in the US.