Donald Trump equates wind farms to Lockerbie disaster

[This is the headline over an article published in The Huffington Post on this date in 2014. It reads in part:]

Donald Trump has compared the development of wind farms in Scotland to the Lockerbie disaster.

In yet another bizarre attack on green energy schemes, the billionaire tycoon announced “wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103.”

All 259 passengers and crew on board the flight and 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed when the Boeing 747 plunged from the skies over Dumfries and Galloway on 21 December, 1988.

The crass comments have sparked outrage from MPs and grieving families alike.

He made the remarks after green campaigners in Scotland urged the Scottish government not to “waste another second” on Trump and his controversial golf resort development, after he lost a legal challenge to an offshore wind farm project.

In an interview with the Irish Times, Trump again showcased his true passion of hating wind farms.

“Wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103. They make people sick with the continuous noise.

“They’re an abomination and are only sustained with government subsidy. Scotland is in the middle of a revolution against wind farms.”

Susan Cohen’s daughter was killed in the disaster. She told The Scotsman Trump had chosen an “unfortunate choice of words.”

“I wish he had not made that comparison. Lockerbie was a ghastly tragedy that destroyed many lives and is beyond comparison. It is one of the great and terrible events of man’s inhumanity to man and therefore it’s of an order where it should not be likened to anything.”

Joan McAlpine, the SNP MSP for the South of Scotland blasted the “unbelievably crass,” comments, saying they “show a complete lack of respect to the families affected by the Lockerbie bombing – in the US, Scotland and across the world.”

In December 2012, Trump was accused of “sinking to a new low” and being “sick” for publishing an advert in Scottish newspapers which linked the government’s support of wind farms with the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The US billionaire revealed he was asked to support the Scottish government in the days following Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds.