At a meeting with energy executives on Wednesday, President Joe Biden made what might seem like a bit of an odd comment.
"Are
you getting less resistance when you start talking about wind and the
windmills?" Biden asked. "I know they cause cancer. [Laughter.] Bad
joke. I shouldn't kid about that. I shouldn't have kidded."
What,
exactly, was Biden talking about? Well, he seemed to be referencing
former President Donald Trump's obsession with windmills -- and his
predecessor's false claims that they are shown to cause cancer.
The history of Trump's animosity toward windmills is long -- and deeply personal.
Back
in the mid-2000s, Trump bought land in Aberdeen, Scotland, on which he
planned to build a luxury golf course and resort. Shortly thereafter, he
became aware of -- and opposed -- a plan to build 11 wind turbines off
the Scottish coast.
"I am not thrilled," Trump said in 2006, according to the BBC. "I want to see the ocean, I do not want to see windmills."
And he didn't stop there. Not by a long shot.
And he didn't stop there. Not by a long shot.
"This
is a very, very serious problem that we are addressing. In my opinion,
it is one of the most serious problems that Scotland will have or has
had," Trump told the Scottish Parliament in 2012 as he sought to keep the wind farm from being built.
Trump
added: "I am an expert on tourism. If you dot your landscape with these
horrible, horrible structures, you will do tremendous damage. ... Many
countries have decided they don't want wind, because it doesn't work
without massive subsidies, it kills massive amounts of birds and
wildlife, and there are lots of other reasons."
In
2013, Trump tweeted about high winds damaging a turbine in Scotland and
added this important message: "Any turbine in close proximity to a
school must go!" That same year, Trump had this message for the Scots:
"Economics behind ugly, bird killing wind turbines do not work -- will
destroy Scotland's beautiful coastline."
Despite Trump's dire warnings, the wind turbines were built anyway. The UK Supreme Court ruled against his lawsuit to block the construction in 2015. The 11-turbine facility was completed in 2018. Trump was ordered to pay the Scottish government's legal bills for the wind turbine fight in 2019.
Getting elected president did nothing to change Trump's vendetta against windmills. If anything, he became even more outspoken.
"If
you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your
house just went down 75% in value," Trump told House Republicans when he
spoke at a fundraiser in April 2019. "And they say the noise causes
cancer." (Fact Check: Not true!)
And on the 2020 campaign trail, Trump worked windmills into his regular riff.
"If Hillary (Clinton) got in ... you'd be doing wind. Windmills," he said at a campaign rally in Michigan in the spring of 2019.
"And if it doesn't blow, you can forget about television for that
night. 'Darling, I want to watch television. I'm sorry! The wind isn't
blowing.' ... I know a lot about wind."
And then there was this from an August 2019 rally in Pittsburgh:
"Unlike
those big windmills that destroy everybody's property values, kill all
the birds," Trump said. "One day, the environmentalists are going to
tell us what's going on with that. And then all of a sudden, it stops.
The wind and the televisions go off. And your wives and husbands say:
'Darling, I want to watch Donald Trump on television tonight. But the
wind stopped blowing and I can't watch. There's no electricity in the
house, darling.'"
And this from December 2019 speech in Florida:
"I
never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much," Trump
said. "They're noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird
graveyard? Go under a windmill someday. You'll see more birds than
you've ever seen in your life."
Donald Trump has been consistent about very few things in his life -- and political career. But he's always hated windmills.
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