Inside Donald Trump's ties to Scotland - from family history to business ventures

As the US election enters its final stretch, millions across the globe are anxiously calculating how a possible win for Donald Trump could impact their own nation's foreign policies and trade opportunities.

But one country that is assured of the presidential hopeful's favour is Scotland, where Trump has strong family ties and business interests.

Trump has championed his Scottish heritage on many occasions, publicly celebrating both his Caledonian relatives and their motherland. The presidential hopeful is himself half Scottish via his mother Mary Anne MacLeod, who was raised in a Gaelic-speaking household on the Isle of Lewis before emigrating to New York in search of work as a teenager.

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These family roots inspired Trump to choose Scotland as the location for three of his internationally renowned golf courses, even recently announcing that his new resort in Aberdeenshire will be named the MacLeod Course after his mother.

Speaking on Andrew Schulz's ‘Flagrant with Akaash Singh’ podcast recently, Trump praised his mother’s bubbly personality, which he claimed matched the broader Scottish temperament.

He said: “The Scottish people...they're very great people, they're tough people. They're good fighters. [My mother] was funny, she had a great sense of humour.”

In fact, startling new polling suggests that Trump’s esteem for the Scottish people is mutual. A new survey by Norstat has revealed that a quarter of Scots hope that the Republican nominee will win Tuesday’s US presidential election – more than any other Western European country.

With 25 per cent of Scots backing Trump for the presidency, the Republican candidate has more supporters in Scotland than in France (14 percent), Denmark (seven percent), or even in Italy (24 percent), where there is a hard-right government.

However, not all Scots are fans of the former president. Over the years Trump’s golf course empire has proved controversial among Scottish residents and campaigners, some of whom welcome the economic opportunities the developments bring, and others who brand them a social and environmental disaster.

The opening of Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire in 2012 sparked a bitter feud with nearby Menie residents, who refused to sell their land to the real estate tycoon.

Unable to buy out the proud locals, the Trump Organization instead demanded the Council to use its powers of compulsory purchase to seize their land, unsuccessfully threatening local families with eviction.

A bitter Trump even accused local farmer and salmon fisherman Michael Forbes of living in a “pig-like atmosphere” when he vowed not to surrender his land.

Forbes and his elderly mother were left without water for five years when construction works on a road for the golf course burst a water pipe and Trump’s builders refused to replace it.

The farmer said: “When I met him all he talked about was Trump and money. I really regret to this day that I didn't knock him on his a*** then. They can please themselves, just leave me alone.”

The golf course angered even more Scots in 2020 when the government’s environmental agency declared that the sand dunes surrounding Trump’s Menie resort had lost their special status as a nationally-important Site of Special Scientific Interest. Nature Scot explained that the development had “partially destroyed” the area of natural beauty beyond any hope of recovery.

Now, even the man who helped arrange the deal for the Aberdeenshire golf course says the country was misled by the American’s claims that he would pump £1bn into the golf course and surrounding communities.

Speaking on the BBC Sounds podcast, Neil Hobday said he felt "hoodwinked and ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it", after Trump’s promises of significant local investment failed to materialise.

The Aberdeenshire locals’ rejection of Trump has been echoed by higher-profile Scots too, with the Scotsman revealing that several Scottish stars have donated thousands of dollars to rival Kamala Harris’ official campaign group.

Ewan McGregor recently gave a one-off contribution of $1,000 to Harris’ team, while fellow actor Brian Cox made more than 60 individual donations to groups supporting Harris throughout 2024.

David Byrne, who co-founded the Talking Heads, has also funded Democrat causes more than 20 times over the past year, with actors Alan Cumming and Kevin McKidd making multiple donations to similar fundraisers in recent years.

Dundee native and ‘Succession’ star Cox has previously branded Trump as an “idiot” who is “living in a kind of cloud cuckoo land”.

The actor previously told US magazine Variety: “We have this pink Pinocchio in the White House and I’m surprised his nose doesn’t penetrate the television screen, the amount of lies that man talks.”

While the former President has drawn widespread criticism from many high-profile Scots, others have defended his right to engage with their country. When half a million people singed a petition to ban Trump from entry into the UK in 2016, Edinburgh-based author J.K. Rowling spoke up for the "objectionable" leader.

As previously reported by People, she said: "I consider him offensive and bigoted, but he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there. His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot.”

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