During his first phone call with then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Donald Trump recounted a peculiar story involving windmills, birds, and "fat foxes" that left British officials struggling to maintain their composure, according to Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's former chief of staff.
McSweeney, speaking to the BBC, described the conversation as filled with unexpected moments. Trump, who has long expressed skepticism about wind power, began by criticizing Britain's windmills. "He started saying, ‘Look, Britain’s a beautiful country, but you have too many windmills,’" McSweeney recalled. "Fine. He was making his point, he’s made that publicly enough times."
Trump then elaborated on his concerns, suggesting that windmills were detrimental to wildlife. "He started to say ‘the windmills are killing your birds, the birds are falling by the windmills, foxes are eating those birds,’" McSweeney said. This part of the narrative prompted suppressed laughter among the British officials present, who McSweeney noted were "barely able to contain themselves because it was extremely funny."
The situation escalated when Trump introduced the concept of "fat foxes." "And he went on to say that as the foxes ate so many birds and became lazy, they became fat," McSweeney recounted. "And as they became so fat, people no longer knew what kind of a creature they were because they were too fat. They were these fat foxes walking around Scotland eating dead birds."
Despite the surreal nature of the story, McSweeney stated that Starmer managed to remain professional and avoid laughing, though others in the room did not fare as well. McSweeney suggested that Trump was attempting to be humorous.
Trump's animosity towards windmills predates this conversation by decades. His opposition intensified after an offshore wind farm was proposed near land he intended to develop as a golf resort in Scotland. He sued to block the project, which he lost, and has since publicly criticized wind power and other renewable energy sources. In 2019, he falsely claimed that windmills cause cancer. His administration also reportedly paid a French company $1 billion to abandon two offshore wind leases.