February 21, 2020 02:08 PM UTC

Trump Lies About Wind Power While Gardner, Tipton, Buck Cheer

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

A portion of President Donald Trump’s hour and forty minute rambling disquisition yesterday evening in Colorado Springs devoted to the subject of wind power is provoking considerable discussion today–not just for the extremely fact-challenged nature of Trump’s oft-repeated bogus complaints about wind energy, but also the Colorado Republicans who stood idly by clapping while Trump disparaged an industry that directly employs literally thousands of Coloradans.

Transcribed for those readers who find a minute and twelve seconds of Trump too much to bear:

TRUMP: They want to use wind, wind wind, wind blow please, please blow. Please please keep the birds away from those windmills, please. Tell those beautiful bald eagles, oh no a bald eagle! You know if you shoot a bald eagle, they put you in jail for a long time. But the windmills knock them out like crazy. It’s true. And I think they have a rule, after a certain number of kills they have to close down the windmill until the following year. Do you believe this? Do you believe this? And they’re all made in China and in Germany, Siemens… [Pols emphasis]

AUDIENCE: (boos loudly)

TRUMP: And for those of you that want to hear it, when they’re making them, more stuff goes up into the air, and up into the ozone, the atmosphere. More stuff is going up there, they’re making it, ay yi yi…and they don’t say this but after a period of time they get tired, they get old, they get rusty, and a lot of the guys say hey their useful life is gone, let’s get the hell out of here. And they’re all over the place. You look at Palm Springs California, take a look, Palm Springs, they’re all over the place. They’re closed, they’re rotting, they look like hell.

We’ll start by acknowledging the possibility that the audience booed Trump after he claimed wind turbines “are all made in China and in Germany,” because they knew that Colorado is home to four wind power manufacturing facilities owned by Vestas which directly employ over 3,700 Coloradans–from Windsor in the northern part of the state to Pueblo’s Vestas turbine tower plant in the south. But as much as we would like to give the crowd in attendance the benefit of the doubt, it’s sadly much more likely that the crowd was simply booing any mention of China and Germany: either ignorant or unconcerned with the robust wind power manufacturing industry in our own state.

For at least three Republicans who stood with Trump on stage yesterday, there’s a bigger problem. Reps. Ken Buck and Scott Tipton both represent Vestas wind power manufacturing plants in their districts, as well as the thousands of employees who work there. And not only did Sen. Cory Gardner represent Vestas plants and workers in Congress and the U.S. Senate, in 2014 Gardner ran for the U.S. Senate on his “different kind of Republican” platform that highlighted Gardner’s support for renewable energy (see above).

With all of this in mind, what should Colorado voters take away from Trump’s low-information lambasting of wind power while Republicans who know better stood idly by and cheered his falsehoods on? Do they agree with Trump disparaging thousands of Colorado workers based on egregiously false information, or are they just too afraid to call Trump out?

Back before Trump turned bald-faced lies into a daily routine, this would be a front page story.