Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump will head to Scotland on Friday for a visit melding diplomacy and golf, a sport that is both his favorite pastime and of financial interest to his family. The 79-year-old billionaire will stay at two luxury seaside golf resorts owned by the Trump family’s holding company: at Turnberry in the west, and in the eastern port city of Aberdeen.
Trump is set to meet with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his trip across the pond, although exact details are not yet confirmed, before an expected return on Tuesday. Starmer will hope to gauge Trump’s intentions for trade with the United Kingdom, which has so far managed to avoid the punishing tariffs unleashed by Trump on dozens of other economies around the globe. The United States and Britain announced a trade agreement in May, but Trump said earlier this month that he hopes to “refine the trade deal that we’ve made,” stoking concerns in London.
Starmer, who is more of a football fan than golfer, has nevertheless managed to place himself in Trump’s good graces. During his visit to the White House, he charmed Trump with a letter from King Charles III, inviting him for a second state visit from September 17 to 19. The Scotland trip will also allow Trump to put some distance between himself and an ongoing controversy involving his ties with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and sex offender, and anger among his supporters over failures to release case files.
In a sign of how sensitive the issue is, the White House excluded the Wall Street Journal from the press pool traveling with Trump this weekend, following an article in the newspaper about a “bawdy” letter he allegedly sent to Epstein in 2003.
– Unwelcome visitors –
Trump has always proclaimed his love for Scotland, where his mother is from, though the feeling is not necessarily mutual. Protests are planned to take place Saturday in Aberdeen and Edinburgh in response to his visit, with a large police operation planned. In March, the Trump resort in Turnberry was vandalized, with the message “GAZA IS NOT 4 SALE” sprayed across the grass, a reaction to Trump’s suggestion of relocating Palestinians and turning the Gaza Strip into luxury real estate.
The Trump Organization is also set to open a new golf course in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, in the northeast of Scotland, sparking discontent among locals and environmentalists. The visit is yet another example of how Trump has blurred the line between his official duties as president and promoting the family business since returning to power in January. The US advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in May cited 21 Trump-branded development projects that would be carried out internationally during his second term. CREW also noted that the Trump Organization’s ethics guidelines published in January did not prohibit the business from launching projects abroad with private interests, in sharp contrast to a self-imposed moratorium on such deals during Trump’s first term in office.
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