T哥朗普经常警告说风力涡轮机正在杀死鸟类。昨晚在威斯康星州，他提出了一个新的相反的担忧：它们导致被屠宰的猪的数量减少。

在一次市民大会上，一位年轻人向T询问肉类价格问题，而他则漫无目的地回答道，不知怎么地把风力发电厂和培根消费量的下降联系在一起。就像他的许多名言一样，你必须通读或观看才能理解。

“食品杂货价格涨幅达到前所未有的水平。我们从未见过这样的情况——50%、60%、70%，”他说。“看看培根和一些产品，有些人不再吃培根了。我们将降低能源价格。当我们降低能源价格时，你知道，这是由他们可怕的能源造成的——风能，他们希望到处都有风。但当风不吹的时候，我们就会遇到一点问题。这是由能源造成的。这确实是由能源造成的，也是他们令人难以置信的支出造成的。他们花光了我们的财富，实际上，他们正在夺走我们的财富，但这是由能源造成的。”

一旦你把它分解成各个部分，它就不那么不稳定了，但仍然毫无意义。T说B登推动了风力发电的扩张。在他看来，这推动了通货膨胀，导致食品价格上涨，迫使注重成本的购物者减少吃培根。

作为一个理论，这还算合理。但问题是，这些理论几乎没有一个是真的。

正确答案如下：B推动扩大风力发电。事实上，美国除煤炭以外的所有能源类别的产量都创下了历史新高。自B在任以来，培根价格也上涨，这是过去几年整体通胀的一部分。

但几乎没有证据表明这些事情有联系。风力发电量增加应该会降低整体能源成本——尽管汽油价格上涨，但消费者密切关注汽油价格。（T说得对，没有风时涡轮机不会转动，尽管其他能源仍然存在。）B大力推动风能发展，这是通过《通胀削减法案》实现的，尽管这项法律的名称不恰当（而且很讽刺），但它似乎也没有产生通货膨胀。特别是，培根价格比通过时更低。

T之前在通货膨胀的背景下曾提到过培根的例子，谁知道他从哪里想出了这个例子。他没有提供具体细节，听起来像他那些可疑的“先生”故事。经济学家们观察到，培根非常受人喜爱，即使价格上涨，对培根的需求也相当稳定。食品杂货价格总体上涨幅度远未达到 50% 。

（讽刺的是，如果风能确实能减少培根消费量，许多支持可再生能源的环保主义者可能会欢呼。肉类生产，尤其是生产美国人消费的大部分猪肉的大型农场，是肮脏和高度污染的。）

T的即兴演讲是他许多言论措辞极其复杂的一个例子。通常你或多或少可以跟上他的思路，但要弄清楚细节则需要仔细分析——尤其是当潜在主张毫无根据时。对于一个如此讨厌风力发电的人来说，T确实说了很多空话。

Donald Trump frequently warns that wind turbines are killing birds. Last night in Wisconsin, he raised a new and opposite concern: They’re leading to fewer hogs being killed.

At a town-hall event, a young man asked the former president about the cost of meat, and he replied with a meandering answer that somehow connected wind farms to a decrease in bacon consumption. As with a lot of Trump quotations, you have to read or watch it at full length to even attempt to follow it.

“Groceries, food has gone up at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. We’ve never seen anything like it—50, 60, 70 percent,” he said. “You take a look at bacon and some of these products and some people don’t eat bacon anymore. We are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down, you know, this was caused by their horrible energy—wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow we have a little problem. This was caused by energy. This was really caused by energy, and also their unbelievable spending. They are spending us out of wealth, actually, they’re taking our wealth away, but it was caused by energy.”

Read: Trump suggests planes can’t fly when it’s not sunny

Once you break it down into component parts, it’s not quite as erratic, but it’s still nonsensical. Trump is saying that the Biden administration has pushed for an expansion of wind power. That has, in his view, driven inflation, which has made grocery prices higher and forced cost-conscious shoppers to cut down on eating bacon.

That’s somewhat coherent, as a theory. The problem is that nearly none of it is true.

Here’s what’s right: Biden has pushed to expand wind power. In fact, U.S. production of every energy category except coal is at a record high. Bacon prices have also risen since the start of the Biden administration, part of broader inflation over the past few years.

But little evidence connects these things. Greater wind production should drive down overall energy costs—higher gasoline prices, which consumers track closely, notwithstanding. (Trump is right that turbines don’t turn when the wind doesn’t blow, though other energy sources continue to exist.) Biden’s big push for wind came in the Inflation Reduction Act, and although that law was improperly (and cynically) named, it also doesn’t seem to have producedinflation. In particular, bacon prices are lower than they were when it was passed.

Annie Lowrey: Americans are mad about all the wrong costs

Who knows where Trump came up with the bacon example, which he has mentioned in the context of inflation before. He offers no specifics, and it has the ring of his dubious “sir” stories. Economists have observed that bacon is sufficiently beloved that demand for it remains fairly stable, even when prices rise. Grocery prices have risen nowhere near 50 percentoverall.

(One irony is that many environmentalists who back renewable energy might well cheer if wind power did produce a reduction in bacon consumption. Meat production, and especially the massive farms that produce much of the pork that Americans consume, is dirty and highly polluting.)

Trump’s riff is an example of the remarkably convoluted way that he phrases many statements. You can usually more or less follow where he’s going, but figuring out the details requires painstaking parsing—especially when the underlying claims are off base. For a man who hates wind power so much, Trump sure produces a lot of hot air.