TRUMP ON GOLF COURSE AS PROTESTS FOLLOW HIM TO SCOTLAND
▶ President at his resort in ancestral heartland and takes ‘some exercise’
US President Donald Trump just wanted to enjoy a round of golf at his luxury Scottish resort before jetting off to Helsinki for a major summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin … but protesters had other ideas.
What was supposed to be a leisurely round of 18 holes ended with dozens of protesters telling the president to “go home”, while at one point a paraglider flew over the course trailing a sign that read “Well below par”.
Mr Trump had arrived in the UK on Thursday for a four-day visit, the latter half of which he was scheduled to spend at Trump Turnberry, his Scottish golf resort in Ayrshire.
But with most of the major political appointments having been held on Friday, Mr Trump went to Scotland for what he called “two days of meetings, calls and hopefully, some golf – my primary form of exercise”.
The golf resort may be haemorrhaging money, but it remains a jewel in the Trump organisation’s crown, and a rather expensive demonstration of Mr Trump’s Scottish lineage.
The protesters did not appear to put him off. At one point, he walked to the edge of the fairway to wave at the demonstrators. He was trailed by a dozen buggies loaded with secret service agents.
Off the greens, there was a risk of a diplomatic dispute early yesterday after it was revealed that Mr Trump’s Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, former US senator Sam Brownback, had complained to the British ambassador in Washington over the treatment of Tommy Robinson, a far-right extremist recently jailed for contempt of court.
Mr Brownback reportedly told UK Ambassador Sir Kim Darroch that the US might be compelled to publicly criticise the government’s handling of the case if it did not treat Robinson more sympathetically.
Activists called the revelation an “extraordinary interference”.
Mr Trump also drew criticism for berating British business leaders at a dinner at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Thursday night, according to reports in The Telegraph.
Before his arrival the president drew censure, even from some of his UK supporters, after he directly criticised Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit negotiations efforts.
Mr Trump went so far as to as to say Mrs May had “wrecked Brexit”, and that the current deal would “probably kill” the prospects of a special trade deal with the US.
He later back-pedalled, calling the article in The Sun newspaper “fake news” before proceeding to heap praise on Boris Johnson, Mrs May’s bitter rival and former foreign secretary who resigned last week, tipping him as a prime minister.
The visit was largely scheduled to avoid central London, where more than 100,000 protesters gathered yesterday to demonstrate against the president’s visit.
An inflatable balloon depicting Mr Trump wearing a nappy was raised outside Parliament Square in Westminster.
But he was not without his supporters, with Conservative right-winger and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox calling the demonstrators “an embarrassment to themselves”.
Even on his days off, the president and his entourage are followed by controversy – this time his ‘religious freedom ambassador’ criticised the jail sentence given to a right-wing British rabble-rouser