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During an interview yesterday, Donald Trump was asked a straightforward question about the crisis in Ukraine: “How does this all end? Is this going to be a long-term thing? How do you see it unfolding?”
In theory, any former president could’ve reflected on the geopolitical events in a variety of ways, but as HuffPost noted, Trump’s attention quickly turned to windmills. No, seriously.
“Well, and I said this a long time ago, if this happens, we are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes,” Trump answered. “And yet the environmentalists love the windmills. And I’ve been preaching this for years. The windmills ― and I had them way down ― but the windmills are the most expensive energy you can have. And they don’t work.”
It’s worth emphasizing for context that Trump didn’t eventually get to this anti-windmill rant after trying to answer the question in a more serious way. Rather, as the YouTube video shows, after being asked about his expectations for the ongoing crisis, it was literally one second later when the Republican’s thoughts turned to, of all things, windmills.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because the former president has long been preoccupied with the subject. It was nearly three years ago, for example, when Trump told congressional Republicans that unidentified people believe the noise generated by wind turbines “causes cancer.”
The then-president insisted at the time that people should trust his judgment on the issue because, as he put it, “I know a lot about wind. I know a lot about wind.”
He does not know a lot about wind — Trump’s condemnations of wind power routinely have no basis in reality — and to think that wind power is somehow relevant to the ongoing war in Ukraine is obviously bonkers.
Complicating matters is the motivation behind the strange rhetoric: As we’ve discussed, Trump’s opposition to wind power appears to have a lot to do with his Scottish golf resort, not his interest in ornithology or energy policy.
Nevertheless, the larger takeaway for the public is striking: The former president and current leader of one of the nation’s two political parties was asked about the future of an international security crisis. His response focused on windmills.