What did Donald Trump do today?

He ranted about wind turbines in an even less coherent fashion than usual.

Since beginning his second term, Trump has taken extraordinary measures to surround himself with friendly media at the White House, preferentially taking softball questions from media outlets that have been, for all practical purposes, engineered to cash in on his fame.

But Trump does not control the media during trips abroad, like the one he took to Scotland this weekend. This allowed a Scottish reporter to ask a question his preferred outlets never would—one that directly addressed his mental state:

REPORTER: Can I ask why you’re in a bad mood? Was it a bad morning of golf, or why you not in a good mood?

Trump had played golf that morning at his Turnberry course, as part of a long-running campaign to use the power of the presidency to have the British Open hosted there, which would bring him a windfall profit. It's not clear how well the round went for Trump—although it was, incidentally, the source of rare video proof of something that has been known for decades: that Trump cheats at golf.

 

Trump demurred, saying only that the golf had been fine and that a bad day on the links was still a good day.

But other remarks he made today indicated that Trump's sour mood might have been related to his golf game after all, because he was forced to confront something he has an inexplicable but intense hatred for: wind turbines. Trump has long been furious that his view at Turnberry is spoiled by offshore wind turbines in the distance, and today during a meeting with EU President Ursula von der Leyen, he went on a lengthy and unprompted rant about them:

TRUMP: And the other thing I say to Europe: We will will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States, they’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains—and I’m not talking about airplanes, I’m talking about beautiful plains. The beautiful—areas of the United States, and you look up, and you see windmills all over the place, it's a—it's a horrible thing, it's the most expensive form of energy, it's no good, they're made in China, almost all of them. Uh, when they start to rust and rot in eight years. Uh, you can't really turn 'em off, you can't bury them, they won't let you bury the propellers, you know, the, the props, because—there's a certain type of fiber that doesn't go well with the land, that's what they say. The environmentalists say you can't bury them. Cause the fiber doesn't go well with the land. In other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job. It's very expensive—and in all fairness Germany tried it, and, uh—wind doesn't work, you need subsidy for wind, and energy should not need subsi—with energy you make money, you don't lose money.  It ruins the landscape, it kills the birds, they're noisy. Uh, you know you have a certain place in, uh, the Massachusetts area that—over the last twenty years had one or two whales wash ashore. And over the last short period of time they had eighteen. Okay? Because it's driving them loco, driving them crazy. Now, windmills will not come—not gonna happen in the United States. And, uh, it's a very expensive and, uh—I would love to see—I mean, today, I’m playing the best course I think in the world, Turnberry, even though I own it, it’s probably the best course in the world, right?  And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills, it's like right—at the end of the 18[th hole]. I say, isn’t that a shame? You have the same thing all over, all over Europe in particular, you have windmills all over the place. Some of the countries prohibit it, but—uh—people oughta know. these, these—these windmills are very destructive.

It's not clear how much of Trump's passionate loathing of wind energy comes from his delicate aesthetic sensibilities, and how much is simply imagined or made up on the spot. But as the links above show, almost all of this is—to put it gently—nonsense. (Also, there is no evidence that wind turbines make whales "loco.")

Why does this matter?

• Irrational anger and obsession over windmills might have a certain literary flair, but it's not a sign of good mental health or fitness for office. 

• The presidency of the United States isn't for shilling golf courses.