London, UK - A former aide to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently recalled how President Donald Trump left UK officials in stitches over his rants about "windmills."
In an interview with the BBC, former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney detailed how, in a phone call with Starmer, the US president tried to convince the leader to ditch his embrace of offshore wind turbines, which he refers to as "windmills."
"Then he started saying, 'The windmills are killing your birds. The birds are falling around the windmills, and the foxes are eating those birds,'" McSweeney recalled.
Trump then went on to claim that the foxes had become "lazy" and "so fat" that "people no longer knew what kind of a creature they were."
"At that point, the officials in the room were barely able to contain themselves because it was so funny," McSweeney said, noting that they intended to keep things "professional."
While McSweeney said he believed the president was "definitely" joking, Trump has been seriously pushing similar tall tales for years in his effort to demonize wind turbines, other alternative energy sources, and the general move away from fossil fuels.
In September 2023, Trump pushed the completely fabricated claim that turbines were killing whales in "numbers never seen before" by driving them "a little batty."
He has also repeatedly claimed without evidence that turbines are killing bald eagles, the national bird of the US.
The anecdote comes after Starmer announced his resignation last month, to which Trump responded by criticizing him for putting "windmills all over the place."