Following the previous president’s thought course of is usually a problem.
Donald Trump steadily warns that wind generators are killing birds. Final evening in Wisconsin, he raised a brand new and reverse concern: They’re resulting in fewer hogs being killed.
At a town-hall occasion, a younger man requested the previous president about the price of meat, and he replied with a meandering reply that in some way related wind farms to a lower in bacon consumption. As with quite a lot of Trump quotations, it’s a must to learn or watch it at full size to even try to comply with it.
“Groceries, meals has gone up at ranges that no one’s ever seen earlier than. We’ve by no means seen something prefer it—50, 60, 70 p.c,” he mentioned. “You check out bacon and a few of these merchandise and a few individuals don’t eat bacon anymore. We’re going to get the power costs down. Once we get power down, you realize, this was brought on by their horrible power—wind, they need wind far and wide. However when it doesn’t blow we now have just a little downside. This was brought on by power. This was actually brought on by power, and in addition their unbelievable spending. They’re spending us out of wealth, truly, they’re taking our wealth away, however it was brought on by power.”
When you break it down into part components, it’s not fairly as erratic, however it’s nonetheless nonsensical. Trump is saying that the Biden administration has pushed for an enlargement of wind energy. That has, in his view, pushed inflation, which has made grocery costs greater and compelled cost-conscious buyers to chop down on consuming bacon.
That’s considerably coherent, as a concept. The issue is that just about none of it’s true.
Right here’s what’s proper: Biden has pushed to broaden wind energy. In truth, U.S. manufacturing of each power class besides coal is at a document excessive. Bacon costs have additionally risen because the begin of the Biden administration, a part of broader inflation over the previous few years.
However little proof connects these items. Larger wind manufacturing ought to drive down general power prices—greater gasoline costs, which shoppers monitor carefully, however. (Trump is true that generators don’t flip when the wind doesn’t blow, although different power sources live on.) Biden’s huge push for wind got here within the Inflation Discount Act, and though that legislation was improperly (and cynically) named, it additionally doesn’t appear to have produced inflation. Specifically, bacon costs are decrease than they have been when it was handed.
Who is aware of the place Trump got here up with the bacon instance, which he has talked about within the context of inflation earlier than. He provides no specifics, and it has the ring of his doubtful “sir” tales. Economists have noticed that bacon is sufficiently beloved that demand for it stays pretty secure, even when costs rise. Grocery costs have risen nowhere close to 50 p.c general.
(One irony is that many environmentalists who again renewable power would possibly nicely cheer if wind energy did produce a discount in bacon consumption. Meat manufacturing, and particularly the huge farms that produce a lot of the pork that People eat, is soiled and extremely polluting.)
Trump’s riff is an instance of the remarkably convoluted approach that he phrases many statements. You possibly can often kind of comply with the place he’s going, however determining the main points requires painstaking parsing—particularly when the underlying claims are off base. For a person who hates wind energy a lot, Trump certain produces quite a lot of scorching air.
