President Donald Trump has lashed out at his old nemesis, renewable energy, in a bizarre rant involving “windmills” and birds supposedly getting fried on solar panels.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, the president argued that the U.K. should drill for oil in the North Sea instead of investing in green energy.
“It’s such a valuable asset and instead, they’re putting these stupid windmills all over the place,” Trump said. “Every time you put up a windmill, it costs the country millions of dollars a year to have that horrible thing turn. It’s ugly, it’s bad for the environment, it kills the birds, and beyond that it costs a fortune.”
The 79-year-old president then turned his attention to black plastic solar panels that he said “take up all the farmland.”
“You ever see what happens to a bird when a bird lands on these?” Trump asked a reporter. “They fry, because it’s hot… a bird lands on them? It’s over.”
He quickly moved on to the next question and did not expand upon his strange insistence that solar panels are cooking birds alive.
Trump has spent years attacking wind energy, taking issue with everything from how wind turbines look ugly to bizarre claims that they are also killing whales. The one-sided feud dates back to his fury that offshore turbines off the coast of Scotland were ruining the view of his golf resort near Aberdeen.
“You see these windmills all over the place, ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds, and if they’re stuck in the ocean, ruining your oceans,” Trump said during his four-day trip to Scotland in July.
On Thursday, his hatred spilled over again during a joint press conference with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, where Trump called wind farms a “disaster” and a “very expensive joke” compared to his “drill baby drill” mantra.
“The North Sea oil is phenomenal. I love this country, my mother was born in Scotland,” Trump said. “I want this country to do well, and you have great assets that they could start using.”
Starmer said the U.K. will continue with its “pragmatic” approach by investing in renewable energy alongside oil and gas.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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