Welcome to Donald’s playground: cops with rifles and protesters armed with Bombay Mix
IT’S Saturday afternoon and the most expensive round of golf in history is about to start, at a cost to the UK taxpayer of £5million and counting. After talks at Chequers, where one commentator described Donald Trump and Theresa May as being ‘as tense as a bitterly-divorced couple at their daughter’s wedding’, the weekend was supposed to be more of a stag do.
At his personal playground, Turnberry in Ayrshire, the blue and white flag was flying proudly at full mast.
Trump is proud of his Scottish roots, even though the flag was manufactured in America, simply because it was cheaper.
I’m at the course, embedded with the world’s press and a motley crew of protesters who have brought sandwiches and lots of Bombay Mix. Everyone is being very vocal and rude, despite the fact that a tower has been constructed, just feet away, housing policemen with rifles and a telescope. There is a line of flourescent-clad officers reaching from the edge of the hotel’s (heavily fortified) grounds.
But despite the guns, the atmosphere is like a village fete.
The police keep offering us bottles of water. At 1pm, trays of food arrive. Not for us – they’re not that nice. The police now loll in the sand, enjoying a picnic, talking about the World Cup third place play-off between England and Belgium.
I chat to some of the protesters. Hugh Taylor, 67, used to be a caddie here when he was 13. ‘He’s evil. Like Hitler. He disrespected the Queen. Oblivious to her, he was. And May, allowing that creature to hold her hand!’
Retired primary schoolteacher Marie Clowes, 60, is here with her old dog Max. ‘Trump’s treatment of the children [on the Mexican border] was the final straw,’ she says.
We wait and we wait and then, finally, the most powerful man on the planet emerges. He isn’t hard to spot – wearing a white USA baseball cap and standing in front of no fewer than 15 golf buggies (who knew he had so many friends?)
The Secret Service personnel are trying to exude a casual air in shorts and polo shirts. Incredibly,
the President waves at us, at the banners (‘Your maw was an immigrant ye nugget’ and ‘We shall over comb!’). He’s waving his golf club!
‘It’s all an act, the waving,’ one protester tells me. I’m not so sure. George W. Bush always cared what people thought of him. I don’t think Trump gives two hoots. He might have ruined the big day of a local bride, who’d hired the ballroom at Turnberry. I’d felt so sorry for her,
guests stuck in the long queue of cars at the checkpoint, mirrors slid beneath their vehicles when all they were probably carrying was a toaster. But no one ruined Trump’s day. He must be made of steel.