Donald Trump Is Glad the U.S. Is Not Being Powered by Wind 'Because It Only Blows Sometimes'

President Donald Trump repeated a claim that powering the U.S. with wind would not work because it "only blows sometimes" during an interview with Fox News yesterday.

It was a throwaway line in a rambling diatribe from Trump, who was giving his thoughts about coverage of the Robert Mueller investigation, which ended last Friday after 22 months.

Host Sean Hannity played news clips referring to alleged conspiracy between the president and the Russian government. According to Attorney General William Barr's summary of the report, the investigation found that neither Trump nor his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, but it did not draw a conclusion on whether the president had obstructed justice.

"Nobody has been tougher, nobody, on Russia than me," Trump said, as he proceded to tick off a wide-ranging list of assertions intended to prove his point.

Trump told Hannity: "It's what we have done with energy and oil and gas. That's all competition from, for Russia. You look at the Ukraine. You look at so many different levels. You look at our military.

"You look at the fact that we would have been powered by wind, which wouldn't have worked by the way because it only blows sometimes and lots of problems come about."

The president went on to say the U.S. was stronger as a country than ever before—including financially and on the world stage.

"Our markets are hitting records all the time," Trump said. "I have many many records of the highest stock market. People's 401Ks are doing better than they have ever done by far.

"It's up almost 50 percent from the time I was elected president. Other countries are way down. Look at China as an example, we are negotiating a deal with China. We are going to make a very good deal with China. China is way down. We are way up," he added, but did not elaborate on the context.

"Nobody has been tougher to Russia or on Russia than Donald Trump, president Trump. Nobody even close," Trump went on. "And yet with all of that, we want to have a great relationship with Russia, we want to have a great relationship with China. All of these things are smart to do. We will do great with it. But nobody has been tougher.

"When I watched all of this nonsense, it was fake news, just terrible fake news," the president said, repeating his go-to anti-media catchphrase.

It's not the first time Trump has referred to renewable energy sources. In 2017, he pledged to "usher in a golden era of American energy dominance." The president said he would work to expand the nuclear energy sector and create a new oil and gas program. "America will be allowed to access the vast energy wealth located right off our shores," he proclaimed.

Based on his public comments, Trump is a climate change skeptic.

During one speech last year at a fundraiser in Utica, New York, the president proclaimed "coal is indestructible" and criticized wind turbines, although he called them "windmills," seeming to confuse the two.

He said: "You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the windmills [makes a shooting gun noise]. That's the end of that one. If the birds don't kill it first.

"The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it's like a killing field, the birds. But uh, you know, that's what they were going to, they were going to windmills. And you know, don't worry about wind, when the wind doesn't blow, I said. 'What happens when the wind doesn't blow?' Well, then we have a problem."

The comments were first reported by tracking service Factbase. As noted by Factcheck.org, the U.S. Department of Energy addresses the issue of a lack of wind on its website. It confirms that wind does not need to be "backed up."

"The wind does not always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, which creates additional variability," it states in an explainer about wind energy in the U.S. "Grid operators use the interconnected power system to access other forms of generation when contingencies occur and continually turn generators on and off when needed to meet the overall grid demand."