Daniel Simon | The Desert Sun

A day after flying into Palm Springs International Airport for a fundraiser at Larry Ellison's Porcupine Creek estate, President Donald Trump took shots at a familiar foe: the windmills that Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley are known for.

During a campaign speech Colorado Springs, Colo., where he discussed energy independence, Trump reminded his audience about the "rusty," "rotting" windmills made in "China" and "Germany."

He told his audience: "And they're all over the place. You look at Palm Springs, California. Take a look. Palm Springs. ... They're all over the place. They're closed, they're rotting, they look like hell."

On Friday, Palm Springs Mayor Geoff Kors fired back at Trump's comments, saying that the city is proud of the windmills and their "beautiful" impact on the environment.

"It is unfortunate that, at this critical time in our history, we have a president who lies about and denigrates clean green power while embracing and promoting dirty power such as coal and offshore oil drilling, which is destroying our planet," Kors said in a statement.

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In 2016, during Herman Cain's radio show, then-candidate Trump referred to Palm Springs as a "poor man's version of Disneyland."

His disdain for windmills goes back to at least 2012, where he tweeted about how Palm Springs had been "absolutely" destroyed by the wind farm.

Omar Ornelas/The Desert Sun

Trump didn't get a close-up look at any of Palm Springs' windmills on Wednesday. Though he did fly into the Palm Springs airport, during his short visit to the area, the president's motorcade made its way south on Gene Autry Trail to Dinah Shore Drive before heading to the Porcupine Creek estate in Rancho Mirage, many miles southeast of where the valley's windmills are positioned.

Windmills in the Palm Springs area date back about four decades, and in recent years, energy developers here have replaced some aging wind turbines with state-of-the-art models.

The newer windmills are bigger, and more powerful, than the machines installed in the 1980s. That means fewer wind turbines are needed to create the same amount of energy. In fact, fewer turbines can create more energy.

It is true that many 1980s-era turbines are still standing in the San Gorgonio Pass, the gateway to Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, and some are no longer functional.

In a 2018 interview with The Desert Sun, Wintec Energy founder and president Fred Noble, who built the area's first wind farm in the 1980s, said he thought a full "repowering" could reduce the number of wind turbines in and around Palm Springs from more than 2,000 to only 600 or 700.

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Photos: Trump lands in Palm Springs to attend Rancho Mirage fundraiser