December 23, 2019

Days After Impeachment, Trump Has Found His Enemy: Windmills

His comments were hard to follow, but his animosity was clear.

Luis M. Alvarez/AP

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Days after being impeached, Donald Trump is feuding with the wind again. While speaking at a summit for conservative students in Palm Beach, Florida, the president railed against windmills.

“I never understood wind,” Trump said to the crowd at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. “I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody.”

The majority of his comments were hard to follow. “I know it is very expensive,” he continued. “They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous—if you are into this—tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right?”

He went on to say that windmills are killing birds at an epidemic rate. “You want to see a bird graveyard, go under a windmill someday,” the president continued. “You will see more dead birds than you’ve ever seen in your life.” It’s true that windmills can kill birds. Scientists say windmills kill between 214,000 and 364,000 birds each year—a minuscule number compared to the 6.8 million bird deaths caused by communications towers. 

It’s not the first time to president has railed against windmills. In April, Trump claimed the noise from wind turbines caused cancer. Last August, at a rally in Pennsylvania, the president claimed that when the wind stops blowing, households powered by wind energy would go dark. “Your wives and husbands say, ‘Darling, I want to watch Donald Trump on television tonight,'” he said at that rally. “‘But the wind stopped blowing and I can’t watch.'” There is no evidence for these claims.

This article has been updated to correct a citation on bird deaths caused by telecommunications towers.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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