During a St. Patrick’s Day Oval Office visit, President Donald Trump went off on one of his usual unplanned rants about “windmills,” and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin could barely hold back his laughter. The moment stood out because it happened during what is normally a formal diplomatic meeting.
The rant started when a British reporter asked Trump about UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reluctance to back Trump’s Iran war stance with military support. Instead of staying on topic, Trump expressed disappointment with Starmer and then shifted into a rambling speech about energy and wind turbines, which he always refers to as “windmills.”
“Windmills all over the country, destroying those gorgeous Scottish fields,” Trump said. According to The Daily Beast, he also repeated his false claim that China, the world’s largest producer and user of wind energy, does not actually use them. “Windmills, which don’t work, uh, they’re tremendously expensive, and the best testament to that is the windmills are made in China, but China doesn’t use them,” he complained.
Trump’s long-standing dislike for wind energy goes back to a personal dispute over his Scottish golf course
Trump also stated his plans for domestic energy policy, saying, “I am proudly telling you that we’re going to try and have no windmills built in the United States during my,” before trailing off. He added, “They’re very bad environmentally, they kill the birds, they’re unsightly, they make a lot of noise, and for some reason, the environmentalists love windmills.”
The Iran conflict has also drawn significant attention, as Trump’s own counterterrorism chief resigned over the Iran war, accusing Israel of deceiving Trump into a fight with no clear path to victory. Throughout the rant, Prime Minister Martin was visibly struggling not to laugh, cracking smiles and holding back laughter as Trump continued.
This was a particularly notable reaction given that Ireland has a large and growing wind energy industry, with over 300 wind farms already in operation. Wind power currently supplies just over 30 percent of Ireland’s electricity, and the country is working toward 80 percent renewable energy by 2030.
Trump’s dislike for wind turbines reportedly goes back to 2006, when the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group began building wind turbines visible from his Scottish golf course, Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen. “I want to see the ocean, I do not want to see windmills,” he said at the time. He took the matter to court multiple times but lost and was ordered to pay the Scottish government around $290,000 in legal fees.
Since then, Trump has made several public claims about wind energy with no evidence to support them. In 2019, he claimed that noise from wind turbines causes cancer, and during his 2024 campaign, he said turbines were making whales go “loco.” On his first day back in office for his second term, he signed an executive order pausing all federal wind permits.
During a visit to Scotland last year to check on his golf course, Trump repeated his complaints, saying, “Stop the windmills! You are ruining your countries. I really mean it. It’s so sad. You fly over and you see the windmills all over the place ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds, and, if they are stuck in the ocean, ruining your oceans.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s relationship with Iran extends beyond military matters, as he recently officially welcomed Iran to compete in the World Cup, though Iran’s latest demands have put the entire US hosting plan in jeopardy.
Published: Mar 18, 2026 04:30 pm