Environmental activists took a swing at Donald Trump—on his own golf club’s turf.
Protesters erected mock windmills on the green at Trump Turnberry Golf Club in South Ayrshire, Scotland, Greenpeace announced Monday. All six structures stood roughly 10 feet tall and were planted beside a sign reading: “Choose Wind. Dump Trump.”
“Donald Trump wants to keep us as lifetime members of his Gulf Club, where every time he starts an illegal war, bills go through the roof while his fossil fuel backers make billions,” said Lily-Rose Ellis, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace UK.
“But we don’t need to stay stuck in his sand trap—the renewables Trump hates are the best insurance policy against the chaos he’s unleashed.”
The stunt was a coordinated response to Trump’s long-running war on windmills, coming days after he took to Truth Social to aggressively call for expanded oil and gas production in the North Sea.
“Europe is desperate for Energy, and yet the United Kingdom refuses to open North Sea Oil, one of the greatest fields in the World. Tragic!!!” the 79-year-old president raged.
“Aberdeen should be booming. Norway sells its North Sea Oil to the U.K. at double the price. They are making a fortune. UK, which is better situated on the North Sea for purposes of energy than Norway, should, DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!! It is absolutely crazy that they don’t… AND, NO MORE WINDMILLS!”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Trump Organization and Trump Turnberry for comment on the environmental stunt.
According to Greenpeace, one of the world’s largest environmental organizations, roughly two-thirds of Scottish voters (65 percent) want the United Kingdom to ignore Trump’s calls for increasing oil and gas extraction and instead focus on boosting renewable energy.
Ellis said that wind and solar farms built after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have saved the United Kingdom “seven million pounds” in the weeks following Trump and Israel’s surprise war on Iran. Tehran responded by blockading the Strait of Hormuz—a waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes—driving up gas prices and rattling the global economy.
“More clean energy that doesn’t rely on the Strait of Hormuz or Russian pipelines can save us money, boost our security and tackle climate change. It’s a hole in one,” Ellis said.
Trump, whose mother lived in Scotland until she was 18, has repeatedly railed against wind farms near his other Scottish property, Trump International Golf Links Aberdeen.
“Stop the windmills! You are ruining your countries. I really mean it,“ he told reporters while on the tarmac at Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport in July.
“It’s so sad. You fly over and you see the windmills all over the place ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds, and—if they are stuck in the ocean—ruining your oceans," he went on. He has also falsely claimed that windmills cause cancer.
The president’s windmill rage stretches back to at least 2006, when the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group in Scotland was constructing an offshore wind farm near his golf course.
In response, he drafted a letter to the Scottish Prime Minister Alex Salmond, referring to the turbines as “monsters.”
“With the reckless installation of these monsters, you will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history,” he wrote, despite his own mother fleeing the country after suffering from the harsh consequences of the Highland Clearances and World War I.
“I have just authorized my staff to allocate a substantial amount of money to launch an international campaign to fight your plan to surround Scotland’s coast with many thousands of wind turbines,” Trump went on.
The golf course was built—and so were the wind turbines. In 2019, a court ruled against the American president, ordering Trump International Golf Club Scotland Ltd to pay the Scottish government’s legal bills.
Scotland now generates a surplus of energy from its renewable sources—and exports it across the United Kingdom.
