On Friday Scotland will be infested with the presence of Donald Trump, a convicted criminal, abuser of women and best friend of deceased child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein – and those are his best qualities. The orange skinned authoritarian is coming here to play golf, taking yet another publicly funded holiday from his day job of subverting democracy, opening concentration camps, and cosying up to the dictators whose club he so desperately wants to join.
I live just a couple of miles away from his Turnberry golf course, which he rebranded Trump Turnberry with a tacky gold paint sign when he acquired it in 2014 with US$60 million in funds whose source has never been fully explained, which is why the course is known locally as Russian Mafia Turnberry. The Trump Organization claims to have spent about US $200 million on renovating the course. The true figure seems to be less than a tenth of this, only $18 million was accounted for in 2016.
The financing for Trump’s Scottish golf courses came under scrutiny in the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. American journalist Glenn Simpson, who worked for the Wall Street Journal until 2009, testified before Congress that “enormous amounts of capital [was] flowing into these projects from unknown sources and – or at least on paper it says it’s from the Trump Organisation, but it’s hundreds of millions of dollars. And these golf courses are just, you know, they’re sinks. They don’t actually make any money.”
In February 2023, the company managing the golf course, SLC Turnberry Ltd., reported pre-tax losses of £3.7 million in 2021.
Trump is currently suing the Wall Street Journal for US$10 billion because the paper published details of a letter allegedly containing a lewd drawing, claimed to have been written by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein on the occasion of Epstein’s 50th birthday. In the letter, which Trump calls a ‘fake’, he alludes to Epstein’s “secret”, which the letter writer claims to share. Trump’s closeness to Epstein is well documented. Having stirred up his base prior to the election about the revelations of high profile paedophiles supposedly contained in the Epstein files, and promising to release the documents in full, Trump has reneged on his former promise and is claiming it’s all a hoax made up by Barack Obama.
Earlier this month, Trump’s Justice Department said Epstein did indeed die by suicide and that there was no Epstein “client list” and announced it wouldn’t release any more documents related to the case. This infuriated an influential contingent of Trump supporters who had believed the administration would make all of the Epstein files public. There are reports that a dedicated team of hundreds of FBI officers have been tasked with combing through the large archive of documents in order to redact Trump’s name.
This week, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Trump ally Mike Johnson, announced an early adjournment of the chamber, in order to stall efforts to force the release of documents related to Epstein. Republicans need to learn the message from this. If your political party just shut down the entire government in order to protect a man suspected of sexually abusing under age girls, you are not in a political party that is concerned about protecting women and girls from abuse, so spare us your diversionary cant about trans people.
Trump is not due to land in Scotland until Friday, and he’s expected to spend time at his course in Aberdeenshire – the one with the lovely view of the off-shore windfarm – as well as coming to Turnberry, but already on Tuesday Police Scotland had closed the A719 road linking the village of Maidens to the A77, this road passes through the golf resort, right in front of the imposing whitewashed Edwardian era hotel designed by renowned Scottish architect James Miller, who also designed Wemyss Bay train station and the 1905 extensions to Glasgow Central Station including its hotel. Trump had no hand in creating the hotel or course but these examples of Scottish architectural heritage now bear the stain of his name. There are road closures, diversions, speed restrictions, and police checkpoints. The public coastal path which goes in front of the course has been closed. Maidens is now only accessible from the north and getting there from Girvan involves a long detour. The village is effectively a cul de sac, residents of the old folks home to the south of the village must now negotiate a police checkpoint.
All this is to facilitate the golfing holiday of a vain, lying criminal abuser who loves to boast about how rich he is. Police Scotland has estimated that the policing costs alone are in excess of £5 million. Police Scotland have asked the Police Service of Northern Ireland to send officers to assist in police operations in South Ayrshire, at Trump’s other Scottish golf course in Aberdeenshire as well as in Glasgow and Edinburgh where anti-Trump demonstrations are expected to take place. As well as the financial cost to the Scottish public purse, there’s also the cost in inconvenience and disruption to otherwise quiet Scottish communities which have to bear the brunt of the Trump circus coming to town with its clown in chief and his orange pancake makeup.
The truly galling thing is that Trump won’t appreciate any of it, and none of it will have any lasting effect on his behaviour. He’s not about to do Scotland any favours, his addled brain will be soon be back to ranting about windmills or spouting his latest nonsensical conspiracy bollocks.
Trump loves to tell himself and his acolytes that he’s loved in Scotland, the country his immigrant mother was from. In 2025, she’d be rounded up by Trump’s masked ICE goons and forced to sleep on the cold concrete floor of one of his brutal concentration camps before being deported. The truth is that Scots have an even less favourable view of Trump than people elsewhere in the UK, and he’s not exactly popular there either. A poll in February by IPSOS found that 71% of Scots disapprove of Trump, compared to 57% in the UK as a whole. His last visits to our country have been marked by mass protests, this time will be no different.
Trump will certainly receive a very special Scottish welcome. He’ll be greeted by thousands channelling the sentiments of the late great Janey Godley and her iconic Trump is a c**t sign.
We can’t stop Trump coming here, but the people of Scotland can at least make it clear to the rest of the world what we think of him. Police Scotland will do their utmost to insulate Trump from the sight or sounds of the protests against him and even if they do manage to percolate through into what passes for his brain he’ll just tell himself that Obama had paid the protestors. The protests will send a message to decent Americans who are feeling besieged and beleaguered by the assaults of Trump and his sycophants on democracy and decency and let them know that they are not alone.
I’m off next week, we are going on a trip to England to meet my baby granddaughter. This is the trip we had to postpone to to my mum’s final illness and her passing away. I’ll be back the first week of August.
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