President Donald Trump will get no warm welcome in his mother’s homeland.
The president will land at Prestwick Airport, near Glasgow, Scotland, on Friday evening and immediately head to his golf resort at Turnberry, South Ayrshire, in the southwest of the country. He will then visit his other course in Aberdeen, in the northeast, before debuting a new 18-hole course bearing the name of his Scottish mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.
Anti-Trump protests and marches are scheduled to take place throughout the weekend, with events planned in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and at his golf courses. The Stop Trump Coalition has planned marches that will kick off simultaneously in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
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A coalition of trade unions, disability advocates, climate activists, pro-Palestinian and Ukrainian solidarity groups, as well as American diaspora organizations, is also coordinating several days of events.
The political campaign group Everyone Hates Elon has already set the tone by sabotaging Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire by placing a placard under its sign, claiming that it is “twinned with Epstein Island.”
The group also claimed responsibility for sticking a photograph of Trump and the disgraced financier on a bus stop near the U.S. embassy in London.
Even locals in his mother’s birthplace in the Outer Hebrides appear rankled by his impending visit.
“Trump is running scared from the Epstein files,” one local said on X, adding a warning, “Running to Scotland won’t help him. We’re ready - and waiting.”
Seven out of 10 Scots have ill feelings towards the U.S. commander-in-chief, according to the latest Ipsos poll.
“The Scottish public hold a broadly unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump,” Emily Gray, managing director of Ipsos Scotland, said after the figures were released in March.
One young man from Glasgow, interviewed by Scottish publication The National ahead of Trump’s visit, worded it slightly differently.
“You’re a p---k, man,” he said, using a derogatory term for a rude man. “Tyranny and authoritarianism just isn’t welcome in our country.”
“I hate Donald Trump,” another person said Thursday on the streets of Glasgow, according to The National. “Get him out. Why is he coming? Why are we allowing him?”
“I heard he’s got a chronic illness. And I hope it takes him out soon! Please!” she added.
The White House described the visit as a “private trip,” though Trump is set for a Monday meet with the U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump will meet with politicians who have previously scorned him.
Greeting the president as he steps off Air Force One will be Scotland’s secretary of state, Ian Murray, who once backed a motion accusing Trump of “misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.”
Scottish National Party leader John Swinney, whom Trump will meet next week, urged the cancellation of September’s state visit after a televised shouting match erupted during the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s trip to the White House in February.
