In his most recent late-night attack on renewable energy, President Donald Trump tried to get people to support the American bald eagle. Instead, he unintentionally drew attention to an animal incident in the Middle East.
The 79-year-old president was looking for a viral “America First” moment when he accidentally made an online mistake that was easy to refute. It quickly went from political posturing to public ridicule.
Late Tuesday, President Trump posted a graphic picture of a dead bird lying under a wind turbine, which sparked the controversy. He cried, “Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles!” using the gruesome picture to make one of his usual arguments against green energy infrastructure.
The image was meant to show his supporters strongly how destructive wind power is for the environment. But for anyone who knew even a little bit about birds or could zoom in, the story fell apart right away.
Eagle-eyed social media users quickly tore apart the President’s story, pointing out two big mistakes: the bird was a falcon, not a bald eagle, and the “American” landscape was actually in Israel, thousands of miles away. The claim fell apart when people saw Hebrew writing on the turbine, which made the “American carnage” angle impossible to keep going.
The Guardian and other news organizations did some digging and found that the picture came from a 2017 report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Hedy Ben Eliahou of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority took the photo, which showed a kestrel (a type of falcon) dying in the Golan Heights. It had nothing to do with the United States, its wind industry, or its national bird.
The embarrassment grew when the Department of Energy shared Trump’s post on its official channels without first checking it. This made X’s Community Notes system quickly and embarrassingly fix the problem.
The note made it clear that “The image is not of a U.S. bald eagle,” which made the administration’s mistake clear to the public. “It shows a falcon killed by a wind turbine in Israel in 2017. The photo appears in a Haaretz article by Zafrir Rinat published Dec. 20, 2017.”
— U.S. Department of Energy (@ENERGY) December 31, 2025
The mistake gave critics more reasons to believe that the President’s vendetta against “windmills”—a word he insists on using instead of “turbines”—is based more on personal anger than on facts or policy. This is the same leader who said that wind turbine noise makes people sick.
People on the internet reacted in a range of ways, from tiredness to mockery. “Grandpa is drinking again,” said podcaster Spencer Hakimian, showing how tired people are of these late-night outbursts. Some people were less forgiving of the administration’s carelessness. “Morons are in charge. complete drooling idiots,” Jeff Timmer of the Lincoln Project groaned.
Grandpa is drinking again pic.twitter.com/luW485ZjnD
— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) December 30, 2025
It was so ridiculous to get the country’s most famous symbol wrong that it hit a nerve. Boston Brian, a podcaster, said he couldn’t believe it when he remarked, “The President of the United States doesn’t know what a f—— Bald Eagle looks like. Let that f—— sink in for a second.”
EarthMomma, a Bluesky user, pointed out the irony by bringing up a past viral moment: “This man is LITERALLY INSANE,” she posted. “Literally. He had a bald eagle on his desk that actually attacked him and yet he still cannot identify a bald eagle. And evidently the WIND is a dangerous murderer.”
Even though the post got a lot of ridicule, including a jab from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who asked, “Dozy Don doesn’t know what America’s bird looks like???,” it stayed up. This shows that the story is often more important than the facts.
The “Tennessee Holler” account sighed that the incident was just the latest in a long line of “Endless lies,” summing up the mood of a tired electorate watching their President tilt at windmills, this time with a dead Israeli falcon in hand.
Inquistr has reached out to President Donald Trump’s reps for comments.
