Here is the claim, in his exact words. "The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously." [2] He said it at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on January 7, 2025, and he has said versions of it for years. It is a serious charge, that an energy project is killing protected wildlife, so it deserves a serious check. The check does not take long, because the federal agencies whose entire job is keeping those whales alive have already answered it.

The full quote, in context

Give the claim its full shape, because the specifics are part of the trick. "You see what's happening up in the Massachusetts area, where they had two whales wash ashore in I think a 17-year period," he said. "Now they had 14 this season. The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously." [2] The structure is a familiar one: a real and genuinely sad thing, dead whales, set next to wind turbines, with the word "obviously" asked to do the work that evidence usually does.

What NOAA actually says

NOAA Fisheries is the agency that investigates large whale deaths. Its public position is not ambiguous. "There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities," the agency states, and it adds that there is "no scientific evidence" that the noise from offshore wind surveys could cause whale deaths. [1] To date, by its own account, no whale death has been attributed to offshore wind activity at all. [1]

What is actually killing the whales

The whales are dying, and the cause is not a mystery to the people who examine them. The leading documented causes are entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships. [1][3] Reviewing the same question, the Department of Energy found that the elevated stranding numbers began before offshore wind development was underway in the region, which is a problem for any theory that blames the wind. [3] A cause cannot come after its effect.

The tell

Here is the part a careful read does not skip. After years of the claim, the administration has not produced a single study, a single necropsy, or a single agency finding that links a whale death to a wind turbine. [3] The case rests entirely on the word "obviously." When the people who actually examine the bodies, NOAA and the Department of Energy and the marine biologists, all reach the same answer, and the answer is no, then "obviously" is not evidence. It is the absence of evidence, said louder.

Verdict: false. The whales face real threats, and they deserve a real defense from them. This was not it.