BOOS FOR DONALD THE PANTO VILLAIN
WHEN asked this week what the natives made of him in the land of his mother’s birth, the President of the United States was characteristically unequivocal. ‘I think that those people, they like me a lot,’ replied Donald Trump. Fortunately for him, his first visit to Scotland as the leader of the free world did not include a stop in Glasgow’s George Square.
There, as the President prepared to spend the night at his golf resort in Turnberry 50 miles away, a forest of placards contrived to present a very different version of events.
‘Actually, Donald, we don’t like you,’ said one of the more polite ones. ‘Donald where’s your morals?’ said another. The placards being distributed by the Scottish Greens to the throng of Donald-baiters, meanwhile, proclaimed: ‘We shall over comb.’
Others, mostly unprintable, merely spat hatred back at the alleged hater. ‘C’ and ‘F’ words peppered their messages; many focused on the colour of Mr Trump’s skin – Irn-Bru orange – or the size of his hands.
Independence agitators the Scottish Resistance strode around seeking coverage for their banner depicting ‘bravehearts’ lifting their kilts to moon the President.
By 5pm yesterday, more than 1,500 had gathered in the square to broadcast the very opposite of affection for the most Scottish President ever to enter the White House.
Many, certainly, were seasoned campaigners from the radical Left, hoary regulars on the Scottish protest scene with agendas ranging from nuclear disarmament to abortion rights. Others seemed simply to have arrived to wave Saltires with ‘Yes’ to Scottish independence sewn into them. If Trump was wrong, the thinking seemed to go, their cause, however tangential, must be right.
If the aim had been to provide the object of their displeasure with grounds to dismiss this as Fake News, as just a rabble who did not speak for the real Scotland, they would almost have succeeded. Yet it was hard to imagine that his mother Mary Anne MacLeod, from the village of Tong on Lewis, would have viewed Glasgow’s reception for his son with anything other than horror.
‘Would your mother be proud of the way you treat women, Trump?’ was the question on the placard waved by Claire Porter, 33, from Ayrshire, who said she had never before attended a protest rally.
‘This is the first one and tomorrow at Turnberry will be my second,’ said housewife Mrs Porter. ‘I think his mother would be totally ashamed of him.’
How, she demanded, had Mr Trump been allowed to get away with his crude boast about groping women (‘when you’re a star they let you do it’) uncovered in 2016 just before the Presidential election?
‘I’ve had enough of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re somebody in a gym locker room or the President of the United States, it’s unacceptable and that’s why I’ve come here.’
DEREK Lloyd, 61, from Renfrew, arrived with a Donald Trump inflatable – depicting him not as a baby but as a part of the male anatomy – and found himself in heavy demand for selfies. He said: ‘The man is an out and out racist. I think he’s a misogynist and he’s also a fool. I’m no Theresa May supporter but his behaviour towards her during this visit has been appalling. His attitude towards other world leaders is embarrassing.’
In front of the stage, bricks were piled onto a mini-wall – built to echo the Mexican border Mr Trump promised to erect – with each brick bearing a supposed anti-Trump slogan. One declared, somewhat uncontroversially: ‘We’re all fae somewhere.’
On stage, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard gazed out at the sea of political causes and pressure groups and tried to put an umbrella over them. ‘We gather here this afternoon in George Square shoulder to shoulder,’ he boomed. ‘From all parties and from none. From all faiths and from none. From this great city, but from the Highlands and Islands and the Borders as well.’
Then he suggested that Nicola Sturgeon should never have allowed the President of the United States to land here: ‘We should impose a travel ban on Donald Trump and ban him from Prestwick airport, which is owned on behalf of the people by the Scottish Government. We are on the streets to demonstrate against his racism, his bigotry, his denunciation of climate change, his antitrade union actions.’
IN London, meanwhile, two separate demonstrations and an inflatable effigy of Mr Trump formed the main opposition to the US President, culminating in a Trafalgar Square rally yesterday evening.
Among those on stage at the foot of Nelson’s Column was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, in full Trump-bashing mode.
Meanwhile, the blow-up baby Trump which had attracted all the pre-publicity rose barely as high as Big Ben’s knee. Aviation rules prevented it from flying any higher.
One of its ‘babysitters’, Max Wakefield, 30, said the plan was to put the inflatable on an overnight train to Scotland to be used in today’s protests. But there is a ban on it flying anywhere near Prestwick or Turnberry.
Back in George Square, SNP depute leader Keith Brown was putting some Scottish Government gloss on the President’s decision not to meet First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
‘People are saying to me, why is he not meeting Nicola Sturgeon?’ Mr Brown told the crowd. ‘The reason is she would tell him what she thinks, unlike Theresa May.
‘Let’s show Donald Trump what we think of his policies. Let’s show what Scotland thinks of his immigration policies, of his anti-Muslim policies, of the way that he treats women. And let’s show the world what Scotland thinks of Donald Trump.’
As for Mr Trump’s assertion that Scotland really quite liked him, actually, Mr Brown turned to the audience as a pantomime performer might and asked the boys and girls what they thought: ‘Does Scotland love Donald Trump?’ Boos, hisses and cries of ‘Noooooo’ ensued. And that settled it.
The Glasgow protest was one of several planned to take place in Scotland this weekend, as Mr Trump makes his ‘private visit’ to his Turnberry golf resort.
A demonstration is to take place at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh today, along with a Carnival of Resistance in the Meadows. Campaigners will also gather outside the Trump International Golf Links in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, today and it is predicted there could be further demonstrations at Trump Turnberry, where the President is expected to play golf.
Whether any of this puts him off his stroke, we will probably never know.