GOP senator calls Trump's windmill attacks 'idiotic' and disrespectful. The White House shrugs awkwardly.

President Trump went on a several-minute rant against wind power at a Republican National Congressional Committee fundraiser Tuesday night, claiming among other things that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told the Des Moines Register on Wednesday that Trump's line about cancer was probably "tongue in cheek," but his "comments on wind energy — not only as a president but when he was a candidate — were, first of all, idiotic, and it didn't show much respect for Chuck Grassley as the grandfather of the wind energy tax credit."

Iowa was the first state to generate more than 30 percent of its electrical power though windmills, the Iowa Environmental Council says, and Grassley chalked up Trump's wind energy attacks to ignorance about the energy crisis of the 1970s. "I've lived through it, he never has, so I'm going to give him some leeway when he criticizes alternative energy," Grassley said. About 85 percent of new politicians in Washington "think it's stupid that we have wind and solar and everything else, except for a few progressives," he added. "I'm not a progressive but I'm in favor of alternative energy."

White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp shrugged uncomfortably when reporters asked her about Trump linking wind turbine noise to cancer, saying she doesn't "have an answer" for why the president said that.

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Also unwilling to contradict Trump was Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), who told reporters Wednesday that it's "not my place" to offer an opinion on wind turbine noise causing cancer, though she didn't rule it out. "You know how those things change," she said. "One year, coffee’s good for you. The next year, coffee causes cancer." There is no evidence that noise causes cancer.