Protests greet Trump in Scotland
US president tweets, plays golf, prepares for Putin summit
EDINBURGH: Two days before a high-stakes summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump spent part of Saturday playing golf and tweeting about his predecessor and a US cable television network he accuses of covering him unfairly.
Aides had said Trump would spend the weekend preparing for Monday’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki.
Trump was later seen on the links. A BBC reporter recorded footage of him waving at protesters as they shouted “No Trump, No KKK, No Racist USA!” before resuming his golf game.
The protesters were among the thousands of people who came out in Scotland and England to protest the US president’s visit to both countries.
Some 10,000 people marched on Saturday through the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, while police tried to find a paraglider who breached a no-fly zone and flew a protest banner over the resort in western Scotland where Trump and his wife, Melania, are staying through Sunday. Anti-fascist groups and political activists were joined by others waving an array of makeshift anti-trump banners who said they had never demonstrated before. Some signs of their said “We Shall Over Comb” and Dump Trump.”
The glider carried a banner that said “Trump: Well Below Par” over Trump’s resort on Friday night to protest his environmental and immigration policies.
In Saturday’s tweets, Trump cast blame on former President Barack Obama for failing to stop Russian election meddling. It was Trump’s first response to indictments announced Friday in Washington against 12 Russian military intelligence officers who allegedly hacked into the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival, and the Democratic Party, and released tens of thousands of emails in a sweeping Kremlin conspiracy to help Trump win the 2016 election.
“The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration,” Trump tweeted, asking why they didn’t “do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?”