Trump golfs. Scotland remembers. Hundreds protest.
When Donald Trump won the election on November 5, 2024, he also won a five-day all-expenses-paid golfing trip to Scotland. This weekend he’s collecting his prize and negotiating trade deals that will affect the cost of living for millions. The turn out of protestors in the hundreds rather than the thousands has to be a disappointment to the Trump opposition in Scotland, the country where his mother was born (see below).
“WINDMILLS” AND 007
As soon as he arrived at Preston-Gatwick Airport Trump started playing two of his greatest hits like a deejay who knows the oldies are goodies.
HIT # 1 – He hates wind turbines. Or, as he still calls them, “windmills.”
“Stop with the windmills. You’re ruining your countries. I mean it, it’s so sad. You fly over and you see these windmills all over the place, ruining your beautiful fields, valleys, and killing your birds. If they’re stuck in the oceans, ruining your oceans," he said on Friday 25 July.
His objections to wind turbines date back as far as April 2006, when he proclaimed, "I want to see the ocean, I do not want to see windmills". In September 2011 he wrote to then-First Minister Alex Salmond, denouncing the turbines as "ugly," "monstrous," and "environmentally irresponsible". He argued that they would "ruin the view" from his golf course, "hurt tourism," and even "bankrupt Scotland". The Financial Times
Scotland currently gets 55% of its energy from wind turbines and is not in bankruptcy.
HIT # 2 – The greatest Scotsman of our era helped him with the permitting process for the course he built in northeastern Scotland at Aberdeenshire.
“And the second course is great. Sean Connery helped, helped get me the permits. Uh, if it weren't for Sean Connery, we wouldn't have those great courses,” he said on Friday 25 July upon arrival.
“Mr. Connery was not involved in the due process that led to the granting of planning permission for a golf resort at Menie. He did not submit a letter of representation to the council, appear at the planning hearing, or at the public local inquiry,” said Martin Ford, the Aberdeenshire councilor who was chair of the planning committee that initially refused Trump’s application to build the resort.
So, Connery never actually intervened but he did say this, ““During tough economic times, this is a major vote of confidence in Scotland’s tourist industry and our ability to rise to the challenge. I look forward to seeing a new gem in the north-east that is good for Aberdeenshire and good for Scotland.”
Which Trump took and parlayed into Connery practically being one of his partners. “Real estate tycoon Trump has been given the go ahead by the Scottish government to build 500 new houses, 950 holiday homes, a hotel and a world class golf course at the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire. And Scottish actor Connery is lined up for the official launch - he will be given the membership number 007 and will be the first person to tee off on the course.” Express. Alas, 007 was a no show. Trump had said that he wanted the star to play the first shot on the course. But when the resort was opened two years later, Trump played first balls with former Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie instead. Guardian
PAR FOR THE COURSE (So to speak)
Trump’s been pissing people off in Scotland since 2006 when he landed with grand plans for a Scottish Trump-branded golf kingdom that turned out to be less than grand. He promised he would spend $1.5 billion developing his golf courses. He has spent $120 million. There would be 1,000 permanent jobs for the locals, he promised. There are currently 84 permanent jobs. He promised to build a 400-room luxury hotel and hundreds of nearby homes. So far, he’s built a 19-room high end hotel with a small clubhouse and souvenir shop selling Trump stuff. As a big believer in what the polls say when they say good things, he must be dispirited to see that his unfavourability rating in Scotland is stuck at 70%. Others aren’t surprised.
“South West Scotland Hotelier Becomes President Of America For Second Time” Dumfries and Galloway News Nov. 2024
“Convicted US Felon To Arrive In Scotland” The National, Scotland’s pro-independence newspaper July 2025
IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY
If anyone else with such direct links to Scotland had made it to the White House we would be claiming them as one of our own in the same way the Irish embraced JFK. "Had it been anyone else, by golly, we'd have been rolling out the red carpet,” said Jack Perry, head of Scottish Enterprise. “Just touting the fact that he had such a close relationship and had been a major investor here. But the brand is toxic, there's no two ways about it. You can dislike the man, you can dislike his politics, you can dislike his public pronouncements but there still, I think, has to be some respect for the office. I don't think you have any choice but to deal with him,” Jack Perry head of Scottish Enterprise quoted by the BBC in 2017.
TRUMP’S SCOTTISH ROOTS
Originally published June 9, 2025 at Gallagher’s Irish Celtic Corner
Màiri Anna MacLeod, who gave birth to Donald Trump on June 14, 1946, was born in remote western Scotland on May 10, 1912, the tenth of ten children. She grew up speaking English as a second language. Scottish Gaelic was what the MacLeods spoke at home. That fact alone is enough to mark her as Celtic.
Màiri Anna Nic Leòid Trump through the years. Clockwise: As a recently arrived immigrant. At a swimming pool on Long Island. Being interviewed for The Trump Diaries in the 1990s. With husband and son in the 1980s.
Then there’s this, from an article in Politico, “My mother was a wife who really was a great homemaker. She always said, ‘Be happy!’ She wanted me to be happy,” he wrote in Think Big. “My father understood me more,” Trump then added, abruptly shifting gears, “and he said, ‘I want you to be successful.’”
His Celtic ma wanted him to be happy. Fred Trump, his Anglo Saxon pa, wanted him to be successful. That right there not only nails the duality of Trump’s upbringing but captures the difference between being Celtic and being Anglo Saxon. Trump obviously favored his father.
If you were given the choice of being happy or being financially successful, which would YOU choose.
What about Trump’s Celtic provenance?
The Chancellor of Germany recently presented Trump with his grandfather’s birth certificate, dated March 14, 1869 in Kallstadt, Germany. “Your German provenance is a very good thing for America and Germany,” Frederich Merz told Trump, who thanked him for the 156-year-old, gold-framed government document.
Trump, in the process of opening a golf course 200 miles from where Mary MacLeod was born, spoke of his Scottish provenance. No mention of his Celtic heritage. And the immigrant thing? Not much talk of that either.
Which is too bad because for millions of Americans learning about the long road their ancestors travelled to become American citizens often induces some empathy for those retracing that journey today. Treacherously in many cases. “I think it’s fair to say that the capacity for empathy develops through your maternal relationship,” said Prudence Gourguechon, former president of the American psychoanalytic Organization. Trump’s family dynamics have been explored to death. No one outside the Trump Organization has ever suggested that Trump had a close relationship with his ma.
Emphasis on his Germanic roots
The Celtic blood that runs through Trump has been an afterthought. When he went to Scotland to visit his golf course under construction he had his plane land in Stornoway, Scotland so he could visit the humble abode where Mary MacLeod was raised until she sailed out of Glasgow for New York in May, 1930 at the age of 17.
But there was no contemplative pausing to consider the sprits of his ancestors who struggled to survive for centuries as fishermen and small farmers in the unforgiving landscape of the Outer Hebrides. That would be the Celtic way. Instead he spent a minute and a half in the cottage and three hours in the nearby village called Tong then flew the 200 miles to Balmedie. (Remember when Trump sued to stop the construction of wind turbines near his golf course? That was Balmedie near Aberdeen.)
Like everything else with Trump, his heritage is transactional; he uses it when it helps him. Three times he announced that his father was born in Germany. He meant his grandfather Friedrich Trump, who left Bavaria n 1885 at the age of 16, worked in New York, made money in Seattle running a tavern, went back home a rich man, met his wife, got married and returned to America. He was permanently expelled from Germany in 1905 for not having registered for the draft (hmm) and threatened with deportation if he ever came back. He never did.
And when there was friction with the EU in 2019 that foreshadowed the current fissure,Trump played his heritage card during a CBS interview. “Maybe the thing that is most difficult — don't forget both my parents were born in E.U. sectors okay?” he said. “I mean, my mother was Scotland, my father was Germany. And — you know I love those countries.”
Trump clearly revered his dad. His ma, not as much. At the beginning of his first term there was a photo of Fred Sr. on prominent display in the Oval Office. No sign of Mary. Same thing in his Trump Tower corner office. Yet seven times in two years he tweeted the same praise for her. “Advice from my mother, Mary MacLeod Trump: Trust in God and be true to yourself.”
She should have told him to be true to his Celtic self.
