Trump claims Biden is putting a 10mph speed limit on speed boats to ‘save the whales’ – and claims WINDMILLS are actually their biggest killers

• Former President Donald Trump claimed Monday that windmills are driving whales ‘crazy’ 
• ‘They’re driving the whales I think a little batty and they’re washing up on shore at levels never seen before,’ the 2024 presidential hopeful said 
• Trump spoke at a South Carolina boat manufacturer and said he was against speed limit decreases the government wants to enact to save whales 

Former President Donald Trump renewed his war on windmills Monday – this time suggesting they were whale murderers. 

Trump was on the campaign trail Monday in South Carolina, appearing at Sportsman Boats, a boat manufacturer in Summerville, a town outside of Charleston. 

The ex-president and 2024 hopeful expressed that he was against a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule change – which the GOP-led House already paused – that would decrease boat speed limits to protect North Atlantic right whales. 

Trump claimed that only one whale in 50 years had been killed off the South Carolina coastline due to being hit by a speeding boat. 

‘But on the other hand their windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. Nobody does anything about that,’ the ex-president said without evidence. ‘The windmills are driving them crazy. They’re driving the whales I think a little batty and they’re washing up on shore at levels never seen before and they want to stop your boats.’ 

Former President Donald Trump blamed windmills for killing endangered whales – promising a crowd of South Carolina voters he wouldn’t allow new boating speed limit rules to protect whales to go into effect 

‘The windmills are driving them crazy. They’re driving the whales I think a little batty and they’re washing up on shore at levels never seen before and they want to stop your boats,’ Trump said Monday. A dead whale washed up on the shore of Lido Beach, New York in January

He said the proposed speed was like that of a ‘small golfcart’ 

‘This is supposedly in the name of preventing whale strikes but you have a better chance of being struck my lightning than hitting a whale with your boat,’ the ex-president said. 

Trump told the South Carolina crowd that the the ‘Biden speed limit’ would ‘demolish the charter fishing business, crush boat manufacturers and desecrate your cherished Low Country traditions.’  

‘That’s why today I’m announcing that when I’m reelected on day one, I will cancel Biden’s ridiculous speed limit regulations,’ Trump said, earning cheers. 

In August, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee moved to block NOAA’s speed limit rules from going into effect until more monitoring technology was available. 

The rule change would have extended a 10-knot speed limit, which currently applies to boats longer than 65 feet, down to boats between 35 and 65 feet long, in areas NOAA determined right whales to be present. 

An offshore wind farm. Former President Donald Trump has long complained about wind energy making previous unfounded claims such as the noise from windmills causes cancer 

Those areas could extend further offshore than currently designated, meaning the rule change received condemnation from recreational boating and fishing industries, charter fishing captains, port operators and pilotage associations, according to WorkBoat.com.

There are only approximately 340 right whales still alive in the wild – and boat strikes and getting entangled in fishing gear are leading causes of death. 

In 2021, a 54-foot charter sportsfishing yacht in Florida struck and killed a juvenile right whale. The incident also sank the boat, a $1.2 million loss, though all eight passengers survived. 

Trump announced that even by rescinding the speed limits, he would be able to protect the whales.   

‘We will take care of the whales but we will also take care of the workers, the voters, the fishermen of South Carolina, we’ll take good care of them, all of them, including the whales,’ the ex-president pledged. 

‘We will not allow crooked Joe to destroy the South Carolina way of life,’ he added.   

Trump has long held a grudge against windmills – the genesis seemingly being a plan to build an offshore wind farm off of property he owned in Scotland. 

A president Trump kept it up – occassionally ranting about how the noise from windmills cause cancer and claiming they kill so many birds they ‘make hunters look like nice people.’ 

Linking windmills to whale deaths was new for Trump, though a group of New Jersey mayors made the same unfounded claims in February, linking the uptick in whale deaths to offshore wind power. 

At the time, Fox News host Tucker Carlson took up the mayors’ cause. 

‘It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,’ Greenpeace’s oceans director John Hocevar told USA Today. ‘It doesn’t seem to worry them that it’s not based in any kind of evidence.’  

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