Donald Trump is a president like no other. His ability to whip up excitement for politics, especially from those who previously despised it, is second to none. He has created a vast following of loyal supporters who - for some reason or another - don’t mind when he says something ridiculous.
Whether or not the average Trump supporter accepts that he says things which aren’t true, I cannot say. What the man himself has said, however, is far more interesting. In a speech last night to House Republicans, the 45th President of the United States made his way onto the subject of energy.
Trump’s disdain for wind power is almost as well-documented as his love of fossil fuels. "The concept of global warming," he told his Twitter followers in October 2012, "was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
Despite being elected as president, Trump is clearly not willing to relinquish his outlandish views on the environment and, more so, energy. "If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 per cent in value,” the president explained yesterday. “And they say the noise causes cancer.”
Thus far, there has been absolutely no evidence to support the idea that wind turbines - no less, the noise they emit - are in any way carcinogenic. However, Trump holds a certain affection for wayward conspiracy theories, especially if they help further the interests of the gas, oil and coal industries. His dismissal of climate change has long put his administration at odds with environmentalists.
“It's really cold outside,” he mused on Twitter in October 2015. “They are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!" In 2018, he dismissed a climate change report created by his own government. “I don’t believe it,” he stated. Speaking of which, here for your enjoyment or dismay are some more of President Trump’s most questionable quotes.
"I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words."
- Campaign launch rally, 15/6/15
"What I won't do is take in two hundred thousand Syrians who could be ISIS... I have been watching this migration. And I see the people. I mean, they're men. They're mostly men, and they're strong men. These are physically young, strong men. They look like prime-time soldiers. Now it's probably not true, but where are the women?... So, you ask two things. Number one, why aren't they fighting for their country? And number two, I don't want these people coming over here."
- Face the Nation, 10/11/15
“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls. A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate.”
- 16/10/17
"No matter what you do - guns, no guns - it doesn't matter. You have people that are mentally ill. And they're gonna come through the cracks. And they're going to do things that people will not even believe are possible."
- Meet the Press, 4/10/15
"I think I could have stopped [the September 11 attacks] because I have very tough illegal immigration policies, and people aren't coming into this country unless they're vetted and vetted properly."
- Hannity, 20/10/15
With one of the wealthiest cabinets America has ever seen, Donald Trump has plenty of friends with interests in the fossil fuels and mining industries. As a man of business rather than politics, his purported impartiality has repeatedly been brought into question.
However, Trump’s harshest critics might argue that lying and manipulation are par for the course. Yesterday, he criticised Angela Merkel, stating that Germany is “not paying their fair share” towards the military alliance.
“I have great respect for Angela and I have great respect for the country,” Trump then said, perhaps in an attempt to instantly fix any damage which had been done. “My father is German, was German, born in a very wonderful place in Germany so I have a very great feeling for Germany.”
The late Fred Trump, who was an eminent businessman himself, was born in New York in 1905. Yet it’s not the first time that Trump has claimed his father was born in Germany. Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, was born in the German village of Kallstadt. However, he died in 1918 - meaning there is no way Trump could have confused the two.
But Trump has form when it comes to changing various people’s birthplaces. In July 2018, during his criticism of EU countries for trading with Iran after he had scrapped the Iran nuclear deal, he claimed that his father was born abroad. Trump’s mother was Scottish but, of course, Fred Trump was born in New York.
In the press conference, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump also urged Congress “to get rid of judges” and struggled with the word “origins”. Normally, one could safely assume that such verbal stumblings are a sign of old age. But with a man as unusual as Donald Trump, both his knowledge and capabilities remain largely unknown.
