Trump caps his Scottish visit by opening a new golf course
BALMEDIE, Scotland (AP) — President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf.
Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland. Also from the country’s north is the president’s late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born on the Isle of Lewis, immigrated to New York and died in 2000 at age 88.
“My mother loved Scotland,” Trump said during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday at another one of his golf courses, Turnberry, on Scotland’s southern coast. “It’s different when your mother was born here.”
Trump used his trip to meet with Starmer and reach a trade framework for tariffs between the U.S. and the European Union’s 27 member countries — though scores of key details remain to be hammered out.
The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity but also the still-raging scandal over the files related to Jeffrey Epstein. But it was mostly built around golf — and walking the new course before it officially begins selling rounds to the public on Aug. 13, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.
Trump’s assets are in a trust, and his sons are running the family business while he’s in the White House. But any business generated at the course will ultimately enrich the president when he leaves office.
The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012.
Trump golfed on Saturday as protesters took to the streets, and on Sunday. He invited Starmer, who famously doesn’t golf, aboard Air Force One so the prime minister could get a private tour of his Aberdeen property before Tuesday’s ceremonial opening.
“Even if you play badly, it’s still good,” Trump said of golfing on his course over the weekend. “If you had a bad day on the golf course, it’s OK. It’s better than other days.”
Trump even found time at Turnberry to praise its renovated ballroom, which he said he’d paid lavishly to upgrade — even suggesting that he might install one like it at the White House.
“I could take this one, drop it right down there,” Trump joked. “And it would be beautiful.”