Trump interview on GB News was full of falsehoods about energy and climate change
Bob Ward details the untruths from the US President that went unchallenged in an interview with Beverley Turner on 15 November, flouting Ofcom rules and further spreading climate misinformation.
On 15 November 2025, GB News broadcast an interview by its presenter Beverley Turner with President Trump on her Late Show Live programme.
During the interview, President Trump complained about being a victim of “fake news”. However, and ironically, Mr Trump made an astonishing number of false claims, including about energy and climate change, during his conversation with Ms Turner.
The interview clearly violated the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, which states: “News, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.”
Despite the numerous untruths, Ms Turner made no attempt to correct the President, thus finding herself in breach of Clause 5.2 of the Code, which states: “Significant mistakes in news should normally be acknowledged and corrected on air quickly (or, in the case of BBC ODPS [On-Demand Programme Services], corrected quickly). Corrections should be appropriately scheduled (or, in the case of BBC ODPS, appropriately signaled [sic.] to viewers).”
False claims about North Sea oil
Among the many inaccurate and misleading statements made by the President about energy and climate change was: “Your country has the North Sea. It’s one of the greatest energy fields in the world. They make it impossible for anybody to drill environmentally.” That it is impossible to drill is, of course, nonsense. The 2025 Wells Insights Report for the UK Continental Shelf published by the North Sea Transition Authority states: “Development well activity in 2024 remained consistent with 2023 levels, with 42 wellbores drilled each year (excluding mechanical sidetracks), while expenditure increased to £1.6BN from £1.4BN. Exploration and appraisal (E&A) declined in 2024, with six wellbores drilled compared to 15 in 2023 (excluding mechanical sidetracks).”
The President also stated, referring to the British government: “And taxation-wise they want almost 100% of the money that comes out.” This is also factually untrue. The marginal tax rate on income from oil and gas extraction from the North Sea is 78%, with a range of allowances, for example on some capital expenditure.
Mr Trump stated, in a rather incoherent way: “So you have these great oil companies that can’t go there because, and, you know, then they say, well, it’s been there a long time. It’s used. You’ve got 1,000 years of life there.” This was wrong as well. The North Sea is a relatively mature hydrocarbon basin and there are no projections suggesting that there are 1,000 years of production left. The latest figures show that UK oil production declined by 77.8 per cent between 1999 and 2024, and natural gas production fell by 70.2 per cent. Projections by the North Sea Transition Authority show oil and gas production falling by 89 per cent from 54.8 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2025 to just 6 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2050.
Nonsense about renewables and climate change
Mr Trump then moved on to tell a series of falsehoods about renewable energy. He told Ms Turner: “I mean, I fly over Scotland and I fly over parts of the UK in a helicopter a lot. And I’m looking down and I see these gorgeous fields being destroyed by windmills, the most expensive energy you can get.” In fact, onshore wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity. The most recent analysis published by the last Conservative Government shows that the levelised cost of electricity in the UK from onshore wind projects commissioned in 2025 was less than that of electricity from offshore wind and large-scale solar, and much – 67 per cent – less than that from H-class combined cycle gas turbines.
Mr Trump continued: “It’s intermittent because if it’s not windy, you don’t even get it. But to put up those things means you lose millions of dollars. Every time you put up a windmill. You lose millions of dollars because they don’t make money, they lose money.” But the wind industry is not losing money. According to the European Wind Energy Competitiveness Report 2025, published by the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Wind Energy and funded by the European Commission, the wind industry in Europe, including the UK, generates €86.8 billion in revenue each year and adds €54.4 billion to Europe’s GDP.
In response, Ms Turner said: “It’s got to be because there is this assumption that the climate is warming up because of man, and that we have to have more renewables and renewables in principle sound like a great idea, use the sea and the wind.”
Mr Trump’s reply was grossly inaccurate. He said: “… you know, when they talk about the climate, it’s the whole thing is a hoax…It’s the whole thing is a hoax and your country, among others but your country is one of the worst. You talk about UK, it’s one of the worst in the world for believing this nonsense is fiction.” This is just more nonsense. Scientists at the United States National Academy of Science, among America’s best, published their latest assessment of the science of climate change on 17 September 2025. They concluded that “the evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused GHGs [greenhouse gases] is beyond scientific dispute.”
Mr Trump continued to make false claims about climate change. He stated: “They used to say it was started by other countries to cause problems, and they used to call it global warming. But that didn’t work because they started it started getting colder [sic.]. They even called it many years ago global cooling. But those things don’t work. So now they call it climate change, because with climate change you can’t lose.” These claims too are pure fiction. The Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass published a paper on The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change in the journal Tellus as far back as 1956 that accurately foresaw the warming impacts of CO2 on Earth’s atmosphere. Mr Trump may have been trying to refer to a long debunked claim that scientists were focused on in the 1970s on an impending Ice Age before warnings were issued in earnest about global warming.
China – and more on ‘windmills’
Next Mr Trump made demonstrably false claims about China. He said: “As an example, China is very smart. They sell the windmills. Almost all of them used to be Germany and China. Now it’s mostly China. And yet if you go around China, you see almost no wind farms. So they make the windmills and they sell it to the suckers. You know, the stupid people, but they don’t have them themselves. They use oil and gas. They use coal, but they don’t use the wind.” In fact, China has by far the largest deployment of wind farms in the world, with 510 gigawatts of installed capacity by the end of 2024.
Later in the interview, Mr Trump repeated the same falsehoods, including: “And you’re putting up windmills all over. You’re killing all the birds, by the way. They’re ugly as hell. They make noise. They’re very unsafe. And they produce every time that thing goes around, it loses money.” Wind farms are not “killing all the birds”. In fact, cats, cars, buildings and even power lines kill far more birds each year than wind turbines.
Not to be outdone by her interviewee, Ms Turner also contributed to the false claims, stating: “They can’t recycle them. It’s landfill at the end.” In fact, the European wind industry is planning to recycle most of the materials in decommissioned wind turbines when they reach the end of their lives over the next decade.
But Mr Trump was determined to have the last word on wind: “Remember this. After ten years, you have to take them down and put new ones up because they only have a certain life. It’s hard to believe.” In fact, the United States Department of Energy points out that the expected service life of wind turbines is about 30 years. This is about the same lifetime as a closed-cycle gas turbine, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.
Ofcom complaint
It is perhaps no surprise that Mr Trump, given his track record, found it so difficult to tell the truth about energy and climate change. However, it is disappointing that Ms Turner and GB News made no attempt to correct him, and indeed added to the inaccuracies.
I have submitted a complaint to Ofcom, but the regulator makes it impossible to provide a detailed submission, setting a limit of 1,500 characters and only committing to a response if it considers an investigation is merited. Others have found that Ofcom tends to ignore complaints about inaccuracies in radio and television coverage of energy and climate change.