Did President Donald Trump say "If The U.S. Converts To Wind Power, We'll Run Out Of Wind" during a speech at a Pennsylvania rally? No, that's not true: a short article based on a video clip from a tweet completely misquotes Trump. The President was remarking on the unreliability of wind power and joking about power cuts when the wind stops blowing, but he did not mention anything about wind "running out" or "becoming scarce".
The story originated from an article (archived here) where it was published by The Intellectualist on August 13, 2019 under the title "Trump: If The U.S. Converts To Wind Power, We'll Run Out Of Wind". It opened:
During a Pennsylvania rally, President Donald Trump claimed that converting to wind power will cause scarcity of wind.
President Donald Trump claimed that converting to wind power will cause lead to a scarcity of wind and make destroy America's televisions.
"Some day the environmentalists are going to tell us what's going on with that. And then all of the sudden it stops -- the wind and the televisions go off."
The post linked to this tweet from Vox Reporter Aaron Rupar as its source:
Trump, speaking to energy workers in PA, is embarrassingly ignorant about how wind power works.
-- Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2019
"Some day the environmentalists are going to tell us what's going on with that. And then all of the sudden it stops -- the wind and the televisions go off." pic.twitter.com/u5cojEfnJz
Here is the full quote from the video:
... Natural gas. Powerful, clean, natural gas.
And when the wind stops blowing, it doesn't make any difference, does it? I'd like those big windmills that destroy everybody's property values, kill all the birds... Some day the environmentalists are going to tell us what's going on with that.
And then all of a sudden it stops, the wind, and the televisions go off. And your wives and husbands say: "darling, I want to watch Donald Trump on television tonight, but the wind stopped blowing and I can't watch, there's no electricity in the house darling."
No, we love natural gas, and we love a lot of other things too.
It is quite clear that Trump did not mention wind "running out" or becoming "scarce" and he also isn't saying any televisions will be "destroyed".
Some have taken this part of his speech to mean that Trump doesn't understand how wind power works because when the wind turbines stop due to lack of wind there are usually gas-powered backup plants that take over the load and televisions wouldn't stop working.
However that seems inconsistent with Trump saying "when the wind stops it doesn't make any difference" right after talking about natural gas. The part about the televisions going off seems to be just a joke here.
Here is the full video so you can judge about that for yourself:
One thing is definitely the case though: Trump did not mention wind running out or becoming scarce.
