Former President Donald Trump renewed his war on windmills on Monday — this time suggesting they were whale killers.
Trump was on the campaign trail in South Carolina on Monday, appearing at Sportsman Boats, a boat manufacturer in Summerville, a city outside Charleston.
The ex-president and 2024 hopeful expressed his opposition to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule change — which the Republican Party-led House had already paused — that would lower boat speed limits to protect North Atlantic right whales. to protect.
Trump claimed that only one whale had been killed off the coast of South Carolina in 50 years, because it was hit by a speeding boat.
“But on the other hand, their windmills are causing whales to die in unprecedented numbers. Nobody is doing anything about it,” the ex-president said without evidence. ‘The windmills make them crazy. They’re driving the whales, I think it’s a bit crazy, and they’re washing up on shore at levels never seen before and they want to stop your boats.”
Former President Donald Trump blamed wind turbines for killing endangered whales and promised a crowd of South Carolina voters that he would not allow new boating speed rules to protect whales to go into effect
‘The windmills make them crazy. “They’re driving the whales, I think it’s kind of crazy, and they’re washing up on shore at levels never seen before, and they want to stop your boats,” Trump said Monday. A dead whale washed up on the shore of Lido Beach, New York, in January
He said the proposed speed was comparable to that of a ‘small golf cart’
“This is supposedly in the name of preventing whale attacks, but you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to hit a whale with your boat,” the ex-president said.
Trump told the crowd in South Carolina that the “Biden speed limit” would “demolish the charter fishing industry, crush boat manufacturers, and desecrate your cherished traditions in the Lowcountry.”
“That’s why today I’m announcing that if re-elected on day one, I will repeal Biden’s ridiculous speed limit rules,” Trump said, earning cheers.
In August, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee moved to block NOAA’s speed limit rules until more monitoring technology was available.
The rule change would have expanded a 10-knot speed limit, which currently applies to boats longer than 65 feet, to boats between 35 and 65 feet long, in areas NOAA says have cetaceans present.
An offshore wind farm. Former President Donald Trump has long complained about wind energy, making previous unfounded claims, such as that the sound of windmills causes cancer
These areas could extend further offshore than currently designated, meaning the rule change was condemned by the recreational boating and fishing industry, charter fishing captains, port operators and pilot associations. according to WorkBoat.com.
There are only about 340 whales left in the wild – and boat strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the leading causes of death.
In 2021, a 55-foot charter sport fishing yacht in Florida struck and killed a juvenile whale. The incident also sank the boat, a loss of $1.2 million, although all eight passengers survived.
Trump announced that he could protect the whales even by repealing speed limits.
“We will take care of the whales, but we will also take care of the workers, the voters, the fishermen of South Carolina, we will take good care of them, all of them, including the whales,” the ex-president vowed. .
“We will not allow corrupt Joe to destroy the South Carolina way of life,” he added.
Trump has long harbored a grudge against windmills — the genesis appears to be a plan to build an offshore wind farm on property he owned in Scotland.
A President Trump endured — occasionally ranting about how the noise of windmills causes cancer and claiming they kill so many birds that “hunters look like nice people.”
Linking wind turbines to whale deaths was new to Trump, although a group of New Jersey mayors made the same baseless claims in February, linking the increase in whale deaths to offshore wind energy.
At the time, Fox News host Tucker Carlson took up the mayor’s cause.
“It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” said Greenpeace Oceans Director John Hocevar told USA Today. “They don’t seem concerned that it’s not based on any evidence.”