members of the press pack managed to fire off a few questions at him and he gave pat, insipid answers. Then he swooped into a golf cart and was driven away.” With some reporters left with questions unanswered, others had answers they couldn’t print, such as Bryce Ritchie, editor of Scotland-based golf magazine bunkered. “I actually had a private phone call with him not long after the purchase to talk about his plans, mainly about the Ailsa course,” he says. “It wasn’t an interview – he just wanted some second-hand opinion. His plans were very ambitious, perhaps overly ambitious, and I told him that. They didn’t go through with everything they wanted to do, which was probably a good thing. But I found he listened to what I had to say, took advice from people who knew the venue and the industry in this country, then ploughed the cash in to get it done. “I know he has a reputation, but I took the guy at face value


and we got on really well. I always thought he was genuinely invested in Scotland and his businesses here.” Prior to Turnberry, in 2006 Trump purchased the 1,400-acre Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire and turned it into a five-star golf resort, Trump International Scotland. The acquisition, which included a former baronial mansion and wild stretch of sand dunes, meadows and woodlands, was controversial. It included a site of special scientific interest and, as concerns emerged about the environment and local residents, the story got bigger. Trump objected to plans for a £230m wind farm, including 11 wind turbines, calling it ‘monstrous’, claiming it would spoil the view for golfers. After numerous legal challenges, in 2015, he took it to the Supreme Court in London, but lost. Colin Wight, former broadcast journalist for the BBC, also


had various encounters: “Trump getting off his plane on his first visit to Aberdeen with the red carpet and a bagpiper playing has always reminded me of the scene in The Day the Earth Stood Still when the alien comes out of his spaceship and steps onto earth. That’s what it felt like with this larger- than-life figure arriving in cold and windswept Aberdeen.” One day, after a live broadcast on the Menie Estate,


“I heard him before I saw him.” Stephen Stewart, former reporter, Daily Record


“He phoned my news editor wanting me to be fired and ban the BBC from the estate.” Colin Wight, former BBC senior journalist


“He wanted to do a lot more work to the golf course, some of it really quite dramatic. I advised him that it could backfire with the golf press as nobody likes to see an iconic golf course effectively ripped up. He listened to what I had to say, to be fair.” Bryce Ritchie, editor, bunkered magazine


“I watched Trump give evidence against wind farms. When asked what his evidence was, Trump responded ‘I am the evidence’.” Alicia Bruce, photographer


Wight got an invitation to the house to see Trump and meet his family. “He was pleased because I’d mentioned that a local poll seemed to indicate support for the project,” says Wight. “I described him at the time as a charming bully. Now I just think he’s a bully. But as I and many others have found out, Donald is happy when you apparently support him, but that changes when you’re perceived as an enemy. It was always difficult to try to explain that, in the BBC, we had a job to report all sides and be impartial. I don’t think he ever got that.” Wight says he got on well with Trump initially and followed him around, filming him playing golf. “He kept asking me what I thought of his shots,” he says. Then, in 2008, he flew to New York to interview Trump in


Trump Tower.


“I remember thinking at the time he looked quite presidential sitting at the desk in his office,” he says. “I was also surprised he did the interview without anyone else there – no press officers. We later had a falling-out when he didn’t like one of my reports and he phoned my editor wanting me fired. I still find it annoying that there is a sign there boasting of the great dunes of Scotland being the biggest in the world when it’s just not true. But if Donald says it’s true, I guess it must be!” Photographer Alicia Bruce wanted to highlight the


environmental concerns and voices of local residents (her images are displayed in the National Galleries of Scotland). “When I first met them, their homes were under threat of


compulsory purchase, with Trump labelling them ‘peasants’ and ‘pigs’ and, in spite of the media on their doorstep, they were often misled, misrepresented and misquoted,” she says. Bruce recalls being followed and chased by Trump’s


security. “On one occasion, an incredibly angry security guard threatened to smash my cameras,” she says. Trump handed over control of both courses to his sons before becoming president in 2017, but retained a financial interest. Reporters are now bracing themselves for a further opening this summer, the MacLeod golf course in Aberdeenshire – named after Trump’s Scottish born mother.


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