AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr., File
President Donald Trump is apparently neither a birder nor willing to use Google Lens.
On Tuesday, the president fired off another missive in his long-running war on windmills by claiming that their turbines are culling America’s population of Bald Eagles. Trump posted screenshots of various claims about wind power before adding a fourth post featuring what appears to be a dead brown raptor of some kind.
“Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles!” the president wrote.
Screenshot
Google Lens traced the image of the dead bird beneath a wind turbine to two articles in Israeli newspapers: Haaretz in 2017 and The Times of Israel in 2019. The photo, which is from 2017, is credited to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Haaretz identified the bird as a falcon, while The Times of Israel was more specific and identified it as a kestrel. Either way, it is not a Bald Eagle.
Trump’s hatred of windmills goes back to at least 2012, when he testified against them before the Scottish Parliament. The future president was incensed at the proposed installation of 11 wind turbines alongside his Turnberry golf resort. Eventually, the turbines were constructed, and Trump called them “some of the ugliest you’ve ever seen.”
He has also repeatedly claimed that windmills cause cancer.
“Hillary wanted to put up wind, wind,” Trump said in 2019 before baselessly claiming, “And they say the noise causes cancer.”
In July, he called windmills “a disgrace.”
“I think windmills are a disgrace,” he said aboard Air Force One while returning from a trip to Scotland. “I think they—they hurt everything they touch. They’re ugly. They’re very inefficient. It’s the most expensive form of energy there is.”
