Donald Trump takes great pride in his Scottish heritage, much to the dismay of many Scots. His mother was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis, and Trump appears to be enamoured with the mystique of his ancestry, speaking of Lewis’ capital Stornoway as “serious Scotland. You don’t get more serious than that.” Quite what he meant by “serious” is unclear. A desire to reaffirm these connections, alongside a deep passion for golf and financial profit led him to build a controversial golf course in Aberdeenshire in 2012. This project seems to have further inflated his sense of propriety when it came to Scotland, as he decreed that “Scotland has already been won.” He frames the building of a golf course as a successful conquest — one can almost imagine his mental image of donning some ancient Scottish crown.
However, despite these fantasies, there have been no particularly positive, practical consequences with regard to a Scottish-American bond. For one, Trump’s interest in his ancestral legacy seems ultimately rather shallow and focused solely on economic ventures and what the aesthetics of Scotland can do for him. When he visited the house in Lewis where his mother grew up, he spent approximately 97 seconds there. During his first presidency, he did not create any particularly favourable economic relations between the two nations, instead raising tariffs on Scottish whisky, resulting in a loss of £500 million in exports according to the Scottish Whiskey Association.
The rejection of Trump by the majority of the Scottish community also provides a further barrier to any hypothetical special Scottish-American relationship. His golf courses in Scotland have been highly controversial, with local communities denouncing them as harmful; building works for the courses left some residents without running water for four years. Trump’s heavy-handed encroachment on Scottish communities resulted in feuds between him and the Menie residents who refused to sell their land to him. The Scottish Greens have strongly criticised them as environmentally damaging, causing damage to what had been a “Site of Special Scientific Interest.” This status has now been removed following the development of the golf course.
It seems that Trump’s ties to Scotland are some that he has falsely presented as deeply ancestral and instead exploited in favour of profitable business ventures. He has no genuine vested interest in Scotland. We can only hope his egotistical rampages do not lead to further damage to this country.
“Aberdeenshire” by Paul Graham Morris is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.