Does an image shared by President Trump in a Truth Social post that reads "Eagles going down!" show an American eagle killed by a wind turbine? No, that's not true: The photograph used to illustrate Trump's post is of a European red kite killed by a wind turbine in Spain at least 15 years earlier. This was the second time in two days the president mistook another raptor killed by a wind turbine for an American eagle.
The claim originated in a post (archived here) shared by the @realDonaldTrump account on Truth Social on January 2, 2026. The caption read:
Eagles going down!
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
A Google reverse image search (archived here) found the image used to illustrate a Telegraph article (archived here) titled "Why birds crash into wind turbines" published on March 11, 2011. The caption under the photo read:
A red kite killed by colliding with a turbine in Spain, where up to a million birds a year may be dying in this way
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of telegraph.co.uk)
Another image search result was from a blog (archived here) on stopthesethings.com titled "Shootin' Up: Developers Killing Endangered Red Kites To Make Way For Wind Turbines" published in May 2020. It was about a report in Germany that developers were "shooting the endangered Red Kite to make way for industrial wind turbines and clear their path to profiteering."
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of stopthesethings.com)
The January 2, 2026, Trump post was the second time in two days that he has used an image of another dead bird that is not an eagle near a wind turbine to make a claim that wind turbines are causing a decline in the population of eagles -- specifically bald eagles -- in the United States. He posted this (archived here) on Truth Social on December 31, 2025, which showed a falcon dead next to a wind turbine in Israel:
Lead Stories also fact checked the claim that wind turbines were killing all of the bald eagles in the United States. Studies estimate the number of eagles killed by wind turbines in the contiguous 48 U.S. states was in the hundreds in 2024, including both bald and golden eagles. The population of American bald eagles was estimated above 300,000 and growing in 2019.
You can see that debunk here: Fact Check: Windmills Are NOT Killing 'All Of Our Beautiful Bald Eagles' As Claimed By President Trump -- Post Shows Israeli Falcon
