Donald Trump takes on a Scottish village in his quest to build a luxury golf course – but faces fierce resistance from the locals.
Discover the clash of money, power, and principles in this engaging tale from Scotland's northeast coast.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two of our Scottish mini-series, where we are going to learn about the time that Donald Trump decided that he wanted to build a golf course in the north of Scotland.
[00:00:32] It’s a fun story, of David vs Goliath, and touches on Scottish culture, resilience, humour, and how money isn’t the solution to everything.
[00:00:42] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:48] Say what you like about Donald Trump, he is a rich and powerful man.
[00:00:53] And like most rich and powerful men, he is used to getting his way.
[00:01:00] People do what he asks them to, or if they do not initially want to do what he asks, he is able to take out his wallet and pay them, or else harass and threaten them, until they change their mind.
[00:01:16] Whether we are talking about New York City property deals, negotiating with foreign leaders or battling the US justice system, he has plenty of experience “winning”, as he would put it.
[00:01:29] So, when he decided to purchase a plot of land in the north east of Scotland, with a view to building a golf resort, he no doubt thought this would be a simple endeavour.
[00:01:42] In 2006, it was announced that the American real estate mogul had bought the Menie Estate in Aberdeen. It was a 1,400 acre estate, around 5 kilometres squared.
[00:01:55] But it was not exactly a prime location.
[00:01:59] It is 20 km north of Aberdeen, three hours away from Edinburgh, not particularly easy to get to.
[00:02:07] And the north east coast of Scotland is beautiful, but it is a harsh climate. It’s windy and cold, and lacks the idyllic islands, mountains and hidden bays of Scotland’s west coast.
[00:02:21] It was an unusual place for Trump to buy, but he had big plans.
[00:02:28] As you may know, his mother was Scottish, he embraced this Scottish heritage of his, and he wanted to create a premier Scottish golf course, with his name plastered all over it of course.
[00:02:42] When it was first announced, there was excitement and broad support from the public.
[00:02:48] After all, it was not a particularly economically vibrant area. The main industry was the offshore oil industry, but there wasn’t a huge amount else apart from agriculture.
[00:03:00] Land was cheap, and jobs were not exactly in abundance.
[00:03:06] And here he was, an American billionaire and then reality TV personality who was pledging to invest hundreds of millions and create thousands of local jobs, 6,000 to be precise.
[00:03:20] What was there not to like?
[00:03:23] But soon enough, it became clear that things were somewhat more complicated.
[00:03:29] For starters, the area was unusual from an environmental point of view. A large part of the estate consisted of sand dunes, which moved along with the winds and the seasons, and this was exactly where Trump revealed he wanted to put his signature course.
[00:03:49] A bunch of moving sand dunes would clearly not make things easy for a golf course, and Trump’s plans included levelling many of these, smoothing them out and removing the wildest parts not to get in the way of the golf course.
[00:04:05] It needed to be pristine, immaculate, meeting the visual standards that Trump had got used to at his other properties all over the world.
[00:04:15] Eventually, with the help of the then Scottish Prime Minister, Alex Salmond, he managed to get planning permission to build the golf course, so within the estate itself, on his land, he could control everything.
[00:04:30] But what he couldn’t control was what his future guests would see beyond the borders of the estate.
[00:04:38] On one side was the sea, and on the other, well, there were a few properties that didn’t quite meet Donald Trump’s aesthetic standards.
[00:04:49] One such property belonged to a man called Michael Forbes, a local man who had been happily living in his small cottage for 40 years before Donald Trump turned up.
[00:05:02] Unlike Donald Trump, Michael Forbes was not a rich man in terms of cash in the bank, but he was the richest man in the world in terms of where he lived. He loved his cottage and the view of the sea, the rugged nature, the peace, and the quiet.
[00:05:19] His house was small and basic, and outside he kept bits of old tractors and farm machinery.
[00:05:28] He had every right to do this, of course, it was his land, his property, and he was causing harm to nobody.
[00:05:37] But Donald Trump didn’t like it.
[00:05:40] Or to be precise, he didn’t like looking at it.
[00:05:45] He made Forbes an offer for his property, but Forbes refused.
[00:05:50] Trump came back and made another offer. Forbes refused again.
[00:05:55] The offers rose to £450,000, over half a million Euros, but Forbes said no. I’m not budging, your money isn’t going to work with me.
[00:06:09] When the carrot didn’t work, Trump turned to the stick.
[00:06:14] He did what he always does. He took to the media to sling mud, to insult Michael Forbes.
[00:06:22] He called him a man that Scotland should not be proud of, called his property a pigsty, saying that it was disgusting.
[00:06:31] And when the words didn’t work, things turned nastier.
[00:06:37] He sneakily did something that he had promised not to do. He contacted the local government for something called a “compulsory purchase order”, which means that an individual is legally obliged to sell their property if there is a strong public reason to do so.
[00:06:55] These are typically used if the government wants to build a road or bridge or some kind of important public good, and there is no viable alternative.
[00:07:05] But Trump thought that his golf course also fell into this category.
[00:07:12] In other words, he wanted the Scottish government to force Michael Forbes to sell his house.
[00:07:19] Fortunately, this request was rejected, but Trump then turned to intimidation and tricks.
[00:07:28] He sent around a member of his team pretending to be someone unrelated to the Trump organisation, someone who was simply looking to buy a holiday home in the region, but the locals soon realised that this man wasn’t who he said he was.
[00:07:44] The locals came together, a group of 5 or so homeowners that Trump was trying to kick out, Michael Forbes and others, and swore not to sell their properties to the American.
[00:07:57] As these properties were bordering on Trump’s new estate, he took to intimidation, and moved the ground to create large walls of earth and grass, essentially blocking the residents in.
[00:08:11] They used to have lovely clear views of the sea and the dunes, but Trump created grassy walls to surround them and block them in.
[00:08:20] In one case, he even sent a $3,500 bill to one of the residents to pay for a fence that Trump had built around their house.
[00:08:31] And at several points the construction of the golf course “accidentally” cut off the electricity and water supply to the stubborn residents.
[00:08:41] But still, they refused to sell.
[00:08:45] All while this was going on, construction was underway for the golf course.
[00:08:50] Trump had promised two world class golf courses and a collection of houses and cottages, many of them affordable to locals, promising to inject hundreds of millions of pounds into the investment-starved region.
[00:09:04] But when he got started, there were no signs of the houses and only one golf course.
[00:09:12] The golf course was completed in 2012, and opened for business that year.
[00:09:18] It was a large loss maker, unprofitable and losing money every year.
[00:09:24] And still there were no signs of this further investment that Trump had promised, and had been instrumental for Trump getting the planning permission from the local government.
[00:09:36] It turned out that there were other plans that Trump didn’t like, this time plans at sea.
[00:09:44] The Scottish government was planning to build a wind farm in the North Sea, just a few kilometres away from the piece of coastline where the new “Trump International” golf course was.
[00:09:55] And as you may know, Trump does not like wind farms. He publicly said that they were ugly and that they were dangerous for local birdlife.
[00:10:05] He said that he would not make any further investments in the region until the government scrapped its plans.
[00:10:13] He was playing hardball.
[00:10:16] The self-declared master dealmaker knew that the Scottish government was keen to attract investment in the region, and that a golf course and large building project would generate hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jobs.
[00:10:30] But it also did not want to be seen as caving to anyone, especially to this braggadocious American billionaire.
[00:10:40] Trump even went as far as taking the Scottish government to the Supreme Court in London, claiming that this new wind farm would spoil the view from his course.
[00:10:51] But the Supreme Court ruled in the Scottish government’s favour.
[00:10:57] Construction of 11 large wind turbines went ahead, and Trump was forced to pay the quarter of a million Euros of legal costs incurred by the Scottish government.
[00:11:08] He was furious. He doesn’t like “losing”, he doesn’t like paying other people’s bills, and now he had a wind farm in front of his golf course.
[00:11:19] This all happened shortly before he became US president.
[00:11:23] But, as you will know, Trump did not exactly stop his business dealing when he took over as president.
[00:11:31] Through associates and his children, the intimidation campaign against the residents went on. But they continued to refuse his offers.
[00:11:41] And then Trump submitted new plans to the Scottish government. These included plans for the second promised golf course, but gone were the affordable houses, replaced by luxury houses and holiday homes costing millions of pounds.
[00:11:59] In the end, the local government agreed, contingent on Trump contributing to a fund for affordable houses and community projects.
[00:12:08] Trump agreed, and in fact, last year, in 2023, he did start work on the second golf course, with the bulldozers coming in and shifting the sand dunes, making way for this new investment.
[00:12:23] Many local residents, understandably, are furious.
[00:12:28] The area used to be wild, a wonderful piece of untouched Scottish coastline with moving sand dunes.
[00:12:36] It was even a place of designated scientific interest.
[00:12:41] But now it has been replaced by Trump’s golf course.
[00:12:45] The dunes are all but gone, and the nearby residents wake to the sound of bulldozers and drills.
[00:12:53] And when the construction is complete, they will look out of their windows and see not the sea, but if they can see over the grassy walls that Trump has built around their properties, they will see the roofs of luxury homes.
[00:13:08] Trump has ruined the area, they say. He made large promises about how much money would flow into the region, but all that has been left are some unremarkable golf courses that are unaffordable to most locals.
[00:13:23] The price, if you are wondering, reaches £395 for a round of golf in the summer, almost €500 just for a round of golf.
[00:13:35] Despite these high prices, the golf course remains loss making, unprofitable every year of its existence.
[00:13:44] And the construction of the course is far from the only golf-related scandal Trump is facing in Scotland. There have also been question marks over how he managed to come up with the cash to buy the land for this golf course, as well as a second golf course he purchased south of Glasgow in 2014.
[00:14:03] Members of the Scottish government have proposed what’s called an “unexplained wealth order”, asking where he got the cash to pay for the transactions, but so far these haven’t come to anything.
[00:14:14] And this still isn’t the end of the Scottish golf course-related legal troubles.
[00:14:20] It turns out that Trump had claimed that the property was worth more than it was when he was applying for a credit line from a bank. He had written that he had planning permission for 2,000 houses, when in reality he only had permission for 500. It was fraud, essentially, but Mr Trump is no stranger to legal troubles. It was just one more legal issue to add to a lengthy list.
[00:14:48] So, where do things stand today?
[00:14:51] If you go to the north of Scotland this summer, you can play at the Trump International golf course, if you are prepared to pay the almost €500 fee that is.
[00:15:01] If you look out to sea, you will see a bunch of wind turbines. Perhaps you will find them an eyesore, terrible to look at and spoiling an otherwise beautiful view.
[00:15:13] Perhaps you won’t notice them. Perhaps you might even find them oddly attractive.
[00:15:19] Unless you hit your ball a long way off the fairway, you probably won’t see Michael Forbes’ house, the “pigsty”, as described by Donald Trump.
[00:15:30] But if you do, you’ll see painted on his shed, “No Golf Course”, and even “No More Trump Lies”.
[00:15:39] You might even see him flying a Mexican flag, in solidarity with another neighbour that Donald Trump has been battling.
[00:15:48] It is a solemn reminder that some things in life are not for sale.
[00:15:55] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Donald Trump’s battle to build a Scottish golf course.
[00:16:01] As a reminder, this was part two of our first ever four-part mini-series on the theme of Scotland.
[00:16:07] In part one we talked about some unusual Scottish traditions and facts, part three will be on the quest for Scottish independence, and part four will be on the bloody Glencoe Massacre.
[00:16:19] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:16:25] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two of our Scottish mini-series, where we are going to learn about the time that Donald Trump decided that he wanted to build a golf course in the north of Scotland.
[00:00:32] It’s a fun story, of David vs Goliath, and touches on Scottish culture, resilience, humour, and how money isn’t the solution to everything.
[00:00:42] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:48] Say what you like about Donald Trump, he is a rich and powerful man.
[00:00:53] And like most rich and powerful men, he is used to getting his way.
[00:01:00] People do what he asks them to, or if they do not initially want to do what he asks, he is able to take out his wallet and pay them, or else harass and threaten them, until they change their mind.
[00:01:16] Whether we are talking about New York City property deals, negotiating with foreign leaders or battling the US justice system, he has plenty of experience “winning”, as he would put it.
[00:01:29] So, when he decided to purchase a plot of land in the north east of Scotland, with a view to building a golf resort, he no doubt thought this would be a simple endeavour.
[00:01:42] In 2006, it was announced that the American real estate mogul had bought the Menie Estate in Aberdeen. It was a 1,400 acre estate, around 5 kilometres squared.
[00:01:55] But it was not exactly a prime location.
[00:01:59] It is 20 km north of Aberdeen, three hours away from Edinburgh, not particularly easy to get to.
[00:02:07] And the north east coast of Scotland is beautiful, but it is a harsh climate. It’s windy and cold, and lacks the idyllic islands, mountains and hidden bays of Scotland’s west coast.
[00:02:21] It was an unusual place for Trump to buy, but he had big plans.
[00:02:28] As you may know, his mother was Scottish, he embraced this Scottish heritage of his, and he wanted to create a premier Scottish golf course, with his name plastered all over it of course.
[00:02:42] When it was first announced, there was excitement and broad support from the public.
[00:02:48] After all, it was not a particularly economically vibrant area. The main industry was the offshore oil industry, but there wasn’t a huge amount else apart from agriculture.
[00:03:00] Land was cheap, and jobs were not exactly in abundance.
[00:03:06] And here he was, an American billionaire and then reality TV personality who was pledging to invest hundreds of millions and create thousands of local jobs, 6,000 to be precise.
[00:03:20] What was there not to like?
[00:03:23] But soon enough, it became clear that things were somewhat more complicated.
[00:03:29] For starters, the area was unusual from an environmental point of view. A large part of the estate consisted of sand dunes, which moved along with the winds and the seasons, and this was exactly where Trump revealed he wanted to put his signature course.
[00:03:49] A bunch of moving sand dunes would clearly not make things easy for a golf course, and Trump’s plans included levelling many of these, smoothing them out and removing the wildest parts not to get in the way of the golf course.
[00:04:05] It needed to be pristine, immaculate, meeting the visual standards that Trump had got used to at his other properties all over the world.
[00:04:15] Eventually, with the help of the then Scottish Prime Minister, Alex Salmond, he managed to get planning permission to build the golf course, so within the estate itself, on his land, he could control everything.
[00:04:30] But what he couldn’t control was what his future guests would see beyond the borders of the estate.
[00:04:38] On one side was the sea, and on the other, well, there were a few properties that didn’t quite meet Donald Trump’s aesthetic standards.
[00:04:49] One such property belonged to a man called Michael Forbes, a local man who had been happily living in his small cottage for 40 years before Donald Trump turned up.
[00:05:02] Unlike Donald Trump, Michael Forbes was not a rich man in terms of cash in the bank, but he was the richest man in the world in terms of where he lived. He loved his cottage and the view of the sea, the rugged nature, the peace, and the quiet.
[00:05:19] His house was small and basic, and outside he kept bits of old tractors and farm machinery.
[00:05:28] He had every right to do this, of course, it was his land, his property, and he was causing harm to nobody.
[00:05:37] But Donald Trump didn’t like it.
[00:05:40] Or to be precise, he didn’t like looking at it.
[00:05:45] He made Forbes an offer for his property, but Forbes refused.
[00:05:50] Trump came back and made another offer. Forbes refused again.
[00:05:55] The offers rose to £450,000, over half a million Euros, but Forbes said no. I’m not budging, your money isn’t going to work with me.
[00:06:09] When the carrot didn’t work, Trump turned to the stick.
[00:06:14] He did what he always does. He took to the media to sling mud, to insult Michael Forbes.
[00:06:22] He called him a man that Scotland should not be proud of, called his property a pigsty, saying that it was disgusting.
[00:06:31] And when the words didn’t work, things turned nastier.
[00:06:37] He sneakily did something that he had promised not to do. He contacted the local government for something called a “compulsory purchase order”, which means that an individual is legally obliged to sell their property if there is a strong public reason to do so.
[00:06:55] These are typically used if the government wants to build a road or bridge or some kind of important public good, and there is no viable alternative.
[00:07:05] But Trump thought that his golf course also fell into this category.
[00:07:12] In other words, he wanted the Scottish government to force Michael Forbes to sell his house.
[00:07:19] Fortunately, this request was rejected, but Trump then turned to intimidation and tricks.
[00:07:28] He sent around a member of his team pretending to be someone unrelated to the Trump organisation, someone who was simply looking to buy a holiday home in the region, but the locals soon realised that this man wasn’t who he said he was.
[00:07:44] The locals came together, a group of 5 or so homeowners that Trump was trying to kick out, Michael Forbes and others, and swore not to sell their properties to the American.
[00:07:57] As these properties were bordering on Trump’s new estate, he took to intimidation, and moved the ground to create large walls of earth and grass, essentially blocking the residents in.
[00:08:11] They used to have lovely clear views of the sea and the dunes, but Trump created grassy walls to surround them and block them in.
[00:08:20] In one case, he even sent a $3,500 bill to one of the residents to pay for a fence that Trump had built around their house.
[00:08:31] And at several points the construction of the golf course “accidentally” cut off the electricity and water supply to the stubborn residents.
[00:08:41] But still, they refused to sell.
[00:08:45] All while this was going on, construction was underway for the golf course.
[00:08:50] Trump had promised two world class golf courses and a collection of houses and cottages, many of them affordable to locals, promising to inject hundreds of millions of pounds into the investment-starved region.
[00:09:04] But when he got started, there were no signs of the houses and only one golf course.
[00:09:12] The golf course was completed in 2012, and opened for business that year.
[00:09:18] It was a large loss maker, unprofitable and losing money every year.
[00:09:24] And still there were no signs of this further investment that Trump had promised, and had been instrumental for Trump getting the planning permission from the local government.
[00:09:36] It turned out that there were other plans that Trump didn’t like, this time plans at sea.
[00:09:44] The Scottish government was planning to build a wind farm in the North Sea, just a few kilometres away from the piece of coastline where the new “Trump International” golf course was.
[00:09:55] And as you may know, Trump does not like wind farms. He publicly said that they were ugly and that they were dangerous for local birdlife.
[00:10:05] He said that he would not make any further investments in the region until the government scrapped its plans.
[00:10:13] He was playing hardball.
[00:10:16] The self-declared master dealmaker knew that the Scottish government was keen to attract investment in the region, and that a golf course and large building project would generate hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jobs.
[00:10:30] But it also did not want to be seen as caving to anyone, especially to this braggadocious American billionaire.
[00:10:40] Trump even went as far as taking the Scottish government to the Supreme Court in London, claiming that this new wind farm would spoil the view from his course.
[00:10:51] But the Supreme Court ruled in the Scottish government’s favour.
[00:10:57] Construction of 11 large wind turbines went ahead, and Trump was forced to pay the quarter of a million Euros of legal costs incurred by the Scottish government.
[00:11:08] He was furious. He doesn’t like “losing”, he doesn’t like paying other people’s bills, and now he had a wind farm in front of his golf course.
[00:11:19] This all happened shortly before he became US president.
[00:11:23] But, as you will know, Trump did not exactly stop his business dealing when he took over as president.
[00:11:31] Through associates and his children, the intimidation campaign against the residents went on. But they continued to refuse his offers.
[00:11:41] And then Trump submitted new plans to the Scottish government. These included plans for the second promised golf course, but gone were the affordable houses, replaced by luxury houses and holiday homes costing millions of pounds.
[00:11:59] In the end, the local government agreed, contingent on Trump contributing to a fund for affordable houses and community projects.
[00:12:08] Trump agreed, and in fact, last year, in 2023, he did start work on the second golf course, with the bulldozers coming in and shifting the sand dunes, making way for this new investment.
[00:12:23] Many local residents, understandably, are furious.
[00:12:28] The area used to be wild, a wonderful piece of untouched Scottish coastline with moving sand dunes.
[00:12:36] It was even a place of designated scientific interest.
[00:12:41] But now it has been replaced by Trump’s golf course.
[00:12:45] The dunes are all but gone, and the nearby residents wake to the sound of bulldozers and drills.
[00:12:53] And when the construction is complete, they will look out of their windows and see not the sea, but if they can see over the grassy walls that Trump has built around their properties, they will see the roofs of luxury homes.
[00:13:08] Trump has ruined the area, they say. He made large promises about how much money would flow into the region, but all that has been left are some unremarkable golf courses that are unaffordable to most locals.
[00:13:23] The price, if you are wondering, reaches £395 for a round of golf in the summer, almost €500 just for a round of golf.
[00:13:35] Despite these high prices, the golf course remains loss making, unprofitable every year of its existence.
[00:13:44] And the construction of the course is far from the only golf-related scandal Trump is facing in Scotland. There have also been question marks over how he managed to come up with the cash to buy the land for this golf course, as well as a second golf course he purchased south of Glasgow in 2014.
[00:14:03] Members of the Scottish government have proposed what’s called an “unexplained wealth order”, asking where he got the cash to pay for the transactions, but so far these haven’t come to anything.
[00:14:14] And this still isn’t the end of the Scottish golf course-related legal troubles.
[00:14:20] It turns out that Trump had claimed that the property was worth more than it was when he was applying for a credit line from a bank. He had written that he had planning permission for 2,000 houses, when in reality he only had permission for 500. It was fraud, essentially, but Mr Trump is no stranger to legal troubles. It was just one more legal issue to add to a lengthy list.
[00:14:48] So, where do things stand today?
[00:14:51] If you go to the north of Scotland this summer, you can play at the Trump International golf course, if you are prepared to pay the almost €500 fee that is.
[00:15:01] If you look out to sea, you will see a bunch of wind turbines. Perhaps you will find them an eyesore, terrible to look at and spoiling an otherwise beautiful view.
[00:15:13] Perhaps you won’t notice them. Perhaps you might even find them oddly attractive.
[00:15:19] Unless you hit your ball a long way off the fairway, you probably won’t see Michael Forbes’ house, the “pigsty”, as described by Donald Trump.
[00:15:30] But if you do, you’ll see painted on his shed, “No Golf Course”, and even “No More Trump Lies”.
[00:15:39] You might even see him flying a Mexican flag, in solidarity with another neighbour that Donald Trump has been battling.
[00:15:48] It is a solemn reminder that some things in life are not for sale.
[00:15:55] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Donald Trump’s battle to build a Scottish golf course.
[00:16:01] As a reminder, this was part two of our first ever four-part mini-series on the theme of Scotland.
[00:16:07] In part one we talked about some unusual Scottish traditions and facts, part three will be on the quest for Scottish independence, and part four will be on the bloody Glencoe Massacre.
[00:16:19] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:16:25] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two of our Scottish mini-series, where we are going to learn about the time that Donald Trump decided that he wanted to build a golf course in the north of Scotland.
[00:00:32] It’s a fun story, of David vs Goliath, and touches on Scottish culture, resilience, humour, and how money isn’t the solution to everything.
[00:00:42] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:00:48] Say what you like about Donald Trump, he is a rich and powerful man.
[00:00:53] And like most rich and powerful men, he is used to getting his way.
[00:01:00] People do what he asks them to, or if they do not initially want to do what he asks, he is able to take out his wallet and pay them, or else harass and threaten them, until they change their mind.
[00:01:16] Whether we are talking about New York City property deals, negotiating with foreign leaders or battling the US justice system, he has plenty of experience “winning”, as he would put it.
[00:01:29] So, when he decided to purchase a plot of land in the north east of Scotland, with a view to building a golf resort, he no doubt thought this would be a simple endeavour.
[00:01:42] In 2006, it was announced that the American real estate mogul had bought the Menie Estate in Aberdeen. It was a 1,400 acre estate, around 5 kilometres squared.
[00:01:55] But it was not exactly a prime location.
[00:01:59] It is 20 km north of Aberdeen, three hours away from Edinburgh, not particularly easy to get to.
[00:02:07] And the north east coast of Scotland is beautiful, but it is a harsh climate. It’s windy and cold, and lacks the idyllic islands, mountains and hidden bays of Scotland’s west coast.
[00:02:21] It was an unusual place for Trump to buy, but he had big plans.
[00:02:28] As you may know, his mother was Scottish, he embraced this Scottish heritage of his, and he wanted to create a premier Scottish golf course, with his name plastered all over it of course.
[00:02:42] When it was first announced, there was excitement and broad support from the public.
[00:02:48] After all, it was not a particularly economically vibrant area. The main industry was the offshore oil industry, but there wasn’t a huge amount else apart from agriculture.
[00:03:00] Land was cheap, and jobs were not exactly in abundance.
[00:03:06] And here he was, an American billionaire and then reality TV personality who was pledging to invest hundreds of millions and create thousands of local jobs, 6,000 to be precise.
[00:03:20] What was there not to like?
[00:03:23] But soon enough, it became clear that things were somewhat more complicated.
[00:03:29] For starters, the area was unusual from an environmental point of view. A large part of the estate consisted of sand dunes, which moved along with the winds and the seasons, and this was exactly where Trump revealed he wanted to put his signature course.
[00:03:49] A bunch of moving sand dunes would clearly not make things easy for a golf course, and Trump’s plans included levelling many of these, smoothing them out and removing the wildest parts not to get in the way of the golf course.
[00:04:05] It needed to be pristine, immaculate, meeting the visual standards that Trump had got used to at his other properties all over the world.
[00:04:15] Eventually, with the help of the then Scottish Prime Minister, Alex Salmond, he managed to get planning permission to build the golf course, so within the estate itself, on his land, he could control everything.
[00:04:30] But what he couldn’t control was what his future guests would see beyond the borders of the estate.
[00:04:38] On one side was the sea, and on the other, well, there were a few properties that didn’t quite meet Donald Trump’s aesthetic standards.
[00:04:49] One such property belonged to a man called Michael Forbes, a local man who had been happily living in his small cottage for 40 years before Donald Trump turned up.
[00:05:02] Unlike Donald Trump, Michael Forbes was not a rich man in terms of cash in the bank, but he was the richest man in the world in terms of where he lived. He loved his cottage and the view of the sea, the rugged nature, the peace, and the quiet.
[00:05:19] His house was small and basic, and outside he kept bits of old tractors and farm machinery.
[00:05:28] He had every right to do this, of course, it was his land, his property, and he was causing harm to nobody.
[00:05:37] But Donald Trump didn’t like it.
[00:05:40] Or to be precise, he didn’t like looking at it.
[00:05:45] He made Forbes an offer for his property, but Forbes refused.
[00:05:50] Trump came back and made another offer. Forbes refused again.
[00:05:55] The offers rose to £450,000, over half a million Euros, but Forbes said no. I’m not budging, your money isn’t going to work with me.
[00:06:09] When the carrot didn’t work, Trump turned to the stick.
[00:06:14] He did what he always does. He took to the media to sling mud, to insult Michael Forbes.
[00:06:22] He called him a man that Scotland should not be proud of, called his property a pigsty, saying that it was disgusting.
[00:06:31] And when the words didn’t work, things turned nastier.
[00:06:37] He sneakily did something that he had promised not to do. He contacted the local government for something called a “compulsory purchase order”, which means that an individual is legally obliged to sell their property if there is a strong public reason to do so.
[00:06:55] These are typically used if the government wants to build a road or bridge or some kind of important public good, and there is no viable alternative.
[00:07:05] But Trump thought that his golf course also fell into this category.
[00:07:12] In other words, he wanted the Scottish government to force Michael Forbes to sell his house.
[00:07:19] Fortunately, this request was rejected, but Trump then turned to intimidation and tricks.
[00:07:28] He sent around a member of his team pretending to be someone unrelated to the Trump organisation, someone who was simply looking to buy a holiday home in the region, but the locals soon realised that this man wasn’t who he said he was.
[00:07:44] The locals came together, a group of 5 or so homeowners that Trump was trying to kick out, Michael Forbes and others, and swore not to sell their properties to the American.
[00:07:57] As these properties were bordering on Trump’s new estate, he took to intimidation, and moved the ground to create large walls of earth and grass, essentially blocking the residents in.
[00:08:11] They used to have lovely clear views of the sea and the dunes, but Trump created grassy walls to surround them and block them in.
[00:08:20] In one case, he even sent a $3,500 bill to one of the residents to pay for a fence that Trump had built around their house.
[00:08:31] And at several points the construction of the golf course “accidentally” cut off the electricity and water supply to the stubborn residents.
[00:08:41] But still, they refused to sell.
[00:08:45] All while this was going on, construction was underway for the golf course.
[00:08:50] Trump had promised two world class golf courses and a collection of houses and cottages, many of them affordable to locals, promising to inject hundreds of millions of pounds into the investment-starved region.
[00:09:04] But when he got started, there were no signs of the houses and only one golf course.
[00:09:12] The golf course was completed in 2012, and opened for business that year.
[00:09:18] It was a large loss maker, unprofitable and losing money every year.
[00:09:24] And still there were no signs of this further investment that Trump had promised, and had been instrumental for Trump getting the planning permission from the local government.
[00:09:36] It turned out that there were other plans that Trump didn’t like, this time plans at sea.
[00:09:44] The Scottish government was planning to build a wind farm in the North Sea, just a few kilometres away from the piece of coastline where the new “Trump International” golf course was.
[00:09:55] And as you may know, Trump does not like wind farms. He publicly said that they were ugly and that they were dangerous for local birdlife.
[00:10:05] He said that he would not make any further investments in the region until the government scrapped its plans.
[00:10:13] He was playing hardball.
[00:10:16] The self-declared master dealmaker knew that the Scottish government was keen to attract investment in the region, and that a golf course and large building project would generate hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jobs.
[00:10:30] But it also did not want to be seen as caving to anyone, especially to this braggadocious American billionaire.
[00:10:40] Trump even went as far as taking the Scottish government to the Supreme Court in London, claiming that this new wind farm would spoil the view from his course.
[00:10:51] But the Supreme Court ruled in the Scottish government’s favour.
[00:10:57] Construction of 11 large wind turbines went ahead, and Trump was forced to pay the quarter of a million Euros of legal costs incurred by the Scottish government.
[00:11:08] He was furious. He doesn’t like “losing”, he doesn’t like paying other people’s bills, and now he had a wind farm in front of his golf course.
[00:11:19] This all happened shortly before he became US president.
[00:11:23] But, as you will know, Trump did not exactly stop his business dealing when he took over as president.
[00:11:31] Through associates and his children, the intimidation campaign against the residents went on. But they continued to refuse his offers.
[00:11:41] And then Trump submitted new plans to the Scottish government. These included plans for the second promised golf course, but gone were the affordable houses, replaced by luxury houses and holiday homes costing millions of pounds.
[00:11:59] In the end, the local government agreed, contingent on Trump contributing to a fund for affordable houses and community projects.
[00:12:08] Trump agreed, and in fact, last year, in 2023, he did start work on the second golf course, with the bulldozers coming in and shifting the sand dunes, making way for this new investment.
[00:12:23] Many local residents, understandably, are furious.
[00:12:28] The area used to be wild, a wonderful piece of untouched Scottish coastline with moving sand dunes.
[00:12:36] It was even a place of designated scientific interest.
[00:12:41] But now it has been replaced by Trump’s golf course.
[00:12:45] The dunes are all but gone, and the nearby residents wake to the sound of bulldozers and drills.
[00:12:53] And when the construction is complete, they will look out of their windows and see not the sea, but if they can see over the grassy walls that Trump has built around their properties, they will see the roofs of luxury homes.
[00:13:08] Trump has ruined the area, they say. He made large promises about how much money would flow into the region, but all that has been left are some unremarkable golf courses that are unaffordable to most locals.
[00:13:23] The price, if you are wondering, reaches £395 for a round of golf in the summer, almost €500 just for a round of golf.
[00:13:35] Despite these high prices, the golf course remains loss making, unprofitable every year of its existence.
[00:13:44] And the construction of the course is far from the only golf-related scandal Trump is facing in Scotland. There have also been question marks over how he managed to come up with the cash to buy the land for this golf course, as well as a second golf course he purchased south of Glasgow in 2014.
[00:14:03] Members of the Scottish government have proposed what’s called an “unexplained wealth order”, asking where he got the cash to pay for the transactions, but so far these haven’t come to anything.
[00:14:14] And this still isn’t the end of the Scottish golf course-related legal troubles.
[00:14:20] It turns out that Trump had claimed that the property was worth more than it was when he was applying for a credit line from a bank. He had written that he had planning permission for 2,000 houses, when in reality he only had permission for 500. It was fraud, essentially, but Mr Trump is no stranger to legal troubles. It was just one more legal issue to add to a lengthy list.
[00:14:48] So, where do things stand today?
[00:14:51] If you go to the north of Scotland this summer, you can play at the Trump International golf course, if you are prepared to pay the almost €500 fee that is.
[00:15:01] If you look out to sea, you will see a bunch of wind turbines. Perhaps you will find them an eyesore, terrible to look at and spoiling an otherwise beautiful view.
[00:15:13] Perhaps you won’t notice them. Perhaps you might even find them oddly attractive.
[00:15:19] Unless you hit your ball a long way off the fairway, you probably won’t see Michael Forbes’ house, the “pigsty”, as described by Donald Trump.
[00:15:30] But if you do, you’ll see painted on his shed, “No Golf Course”, and even “No More Trump Lies”.
[00:15:39] You might even see him flying a Mexican flag, in solidarity with another neighbour that Donald Trump has been battling.
[00:15:48] It is a solemn reminder that some things in life are not for sale.
[00:15:55] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Donald Trump’s battle to build a Scottish golf course.
[00:16:01] As a reminder, this was part two of our first ever four-part mini-series on the theme of Scotland.
[00:16:07] In part one we talked about some unusual Scottish traditions and facts, part three will be on the quest for Scottish independence, and part four will be on the bloody Glencoe Massacre.
[00:16:19] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:16:25] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
