It is no secret that President Trump, outside the U.S., has very little support and praise among the general public, in fact, he is more of a laughing stock of the United States that the world can use as a punching bag. Many years ago, long before there were even dreams of Trump running for office and succeeding, Trump began terrorizing a country that would later become the birthplace of original Trump haters. That country is one that I love and I am proud to say I come from, Scotland.
The general distaste for Trump among Scots has only strengthened in recent years, so much so that if there is even a chance of Trump returning to visit the country, there is public outrage. Mary Anne MacLeod (who later married Trump’s American father) was originally born in Scotland, in Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Because of this family connection to Scotland, Trump, 10 years ago came to build what only he could describe to the press as ‘the greatest golf course in the world’ in Ayrshire, Aberdeen. Along the coastline where Trump decided to build his hotel upon is miles and miles of land, mostly privately owned by owners of the surrounding estates and so Trump saw this as a perfect opportunity to make money and expand his array of business ventures.
While in the process of building this hotel, Trump promised (falsely) 6,000 jobs for Scottish people to the Scottish government. The government took this opportunity in a time of vast unemployment to allow Trump to buy and build upon the land he had wanted to claim. The course grew and grew to a gigantic scale, but Trump still wanted more to satisfy his need for grandeur.
Alongside Trump’s ever-growing hotel venture, the surrounding estates were not pleased with the trouble and noise Trump was making throughout the many months of construction. Trump eventually started to move onto the surrounding land, negotiating with his frustrated neighbors for their land. After many bids, Susan Munro declined Trump’s requests to purchase her land. In response to his failed transaction with Susan, Trump got his workers to build a ten-foot wall surrounding her home to block the view outside. One of these neighbors was Micheal Forbes, the man who was voted Scotsman of the Year, this man.
Michael and his mother Molly, who lived in an adjacent farm, were first approached by Trump, who boasted about his wealth and status, saying ‘what’s this land worth? 25 dollars an acre?‘ in which Michael replied ‘in your f***king dreams is it’. Trump took this resistance badly, calling Michael and his family ‘pigs‘. As Trump became more and more popular within the US, his pressures on his neighbors like Michael to give up their land became increasingly more frequent, so much so that Trump planted evergreen trees twenty feet from another neighbour’s house to block the view as he also declined Trump’s persistent offers. Trump was relentless with his cockiness regarding Forbes’ land, and retained the belief that if he kept increasing the amount of money being offered, Michael would eventually take the offer. This was wrong.
The public started to take notice of the events taking place between Michael and Trump, so to avoid Michael and his mother being evicted, thousands of people bought tiny portions of Forbes’ land to make the transaction virtually impossible for Trump to go through. Even a man in Antartica at the time bought a portion of the land, as in order to make the deal, Trump would have to visit every stakeholder owning part of the land, including him.
Trump eventually gave up on the hope that he would garner the land that Forbes’ owned, but found other ways to ruin the lives of the neighboring people surrounding him.
In construction work renovating his hotel, Trump hit a vital pipeline that supplied Michael Forbes and his 92 year old mother with clean water, making the taps pour sludge and thus making the water undrinkable.
Despite pleas of help and the general public’s support, Trump and his workers refused to fix the broken pipe, so Molly Forbes had to collect drinkable water from nearby streams in a wheelbarrow, for four years.
Trump was breaking Scottish law by doing this, and so he has been hated by the Scottish people ever since. His most recent visit to Scotland was in last Summer, before it was announced he would become the 45th President of the United States. He was greeted by a band calling themselves ‘Juan Direction‘, a woman directly standing alongside Trump’s press conference holding a sign saying ‘Trump is a c***’ and a man throwing golf balls painted with swastika symbols on them at Trump himself. I think it is safe to say that the Scottish people vehemently hate Trump and want no matter with him.
