Trump Claims “Windmills” Cause Cancer, and Other Stories from His Latest Idiotic Press Conference
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/GettyDuring a While House meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Tuesday, President Donald Trump gave one of his most nonsensical press conferences to date, making numerous false claims (which we’ll get into further down) and failing to pronounce the word “origins.” Instead, he swapped it for his favorite color in the crayon box, “orange.”
Since Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report was released, Trump has heralded it as exonerating him from collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. In truth, the obstruction question is yet to be answered. The Independent’s Tom Embury-Dennis reported on Trump’s comments, a number of which were criticisms of the Mueller probe into the president’s alleged connections with Russia:
“I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges, the oranges of the investigation, the beginnings of that investigation,” Mr Trump said. “You look at the origin of the investigation, where it started, how it started, who started it, whether it’s McCabe or Comey or a lot of them.
“Where does it go, how high up in the White House did it go? You will all get Pulitzer Prizes, ok? You’ll all get Pulitzer Prizes. You should have looked at it a long time ago and that’s the only thing that’s disappointing to me about the Mueller report.
“The Mueller report I wished covered the oranges, how it started, the beginnings of the investigation, how it started. It didn’t cover that, and for some reason none of that was discussed.”
Later on, when addressing Germany’s contributions to NATO, Trump brought up his father’s German heritage.
“My father is German, right? Was German, and born in a very wonderful place in Germany, so I have a great feeling for Germany,” he said … except for the fact that his dad was born in the U.S. In fact, his father Fred Trump greatly benefited from cheap housing loans from the U.S. government, which gave him the footing to begin his real estate empire.
It wouldn’t be a Trump press conference without some sort of attack on science or the efforts to combat climate change. He lied and said that wind turbines caused cancer, which is a claim with zero evidence to back it up. The president also mistakenly called the turbines “windmills.” No word on if Trump thought he had suddenly been dropped into the Netherlands wearing wooden clogs and brandishing handfuls of tulips.
“If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75% in value,” he declared, according to the Independent. “And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay? Rerrrr rerrrr!”
Honestly, this would all be hilarious if Don Quixote here wasn’t sitting in the Oval Office.
Finally, Trump had yet another authoritarian fanboy moment when discussing Chinese president Xi Jinping. Apparently, during a 2017 visit to Beijing, he called the leader a “king.”
“He said, ‘But I am not king, I am president.’ I said, ‘No, you’re president for life, and therefore you’re king.’ He said, ‘huh.’ He liked that. I get along with him great,” Trump shared.
It’s no secret that Trump goes gaga over rulers whose countries have limited freedom of speech and freedom of the press, where strongmen get to wield power with little-to-no oversight. His positive attitudes towards Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte (who has incited the deaths of thousands of Filipinos, mostly the urban poor), as well as his fruitless talks lending legitimacy to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, underscore Trump’s true desires. That’s what he thought the presidency would be like—unbridled power, an unchecked exertion of his will—and that is what he’s attempting to do daily.