Donald Trump’s false face
“Away, and mock the time with fairest show,” said Macbeth, once he resolved to murder king Duncan and seize the throne of Scotland, “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” It was with a false face and a false heart that Donald Trump deceived the people and country of Scotland, claims Neil Hobday, project director for Trump’s controversial golf course in Aberdeenshire, which opened in 2012.
Hobday says Trump tricked the Scottish government into allowing him to develop what at the time was one of Britain’s best examples of a mobile sand dune system. The BINO (Billionaire In Name Only) claimed he would invest a billion dollars in the project and thereby significantly boost the Scottish economy. The investment never materialised, and local investors were left holding the bag.
But far worse was the environmental harm Trump did. Thanks to Trump, the sand dunes in the northern part of the course lost their “Site of Special Scientific Interest” status as a nationally-important protected environment. Mr Hobday told BBC News he felt “hoodwinked and ashamed that I fell for it, and Scotland fell for it.”
Scotland learned a hard lesson that, sooner or later, everyone who has ever done business with Trump learns. To Trump, every deal is a zero sum game, where Trump is the winner and everyone else is a loser. He hates to share the wealth, and he never does if he can help it. Trump thought nothing of ripping off the people of Scotland and raping the very land of his mother’s birth.
Without realising what he was saying, Trump blamed the Republican administration of George W Bush and himself for the failure of the Aberdeen course. Trump said that the 2008 financial crash and the Covid pandemic had slowed the pace of its development plans in Aberdeenshire, two calamities made worse by the incompetence of Bush and the criminal negligence of Trump.
But Hobday understood the truth of the matter: “He was willing to fight the environmental battle and create this impression that this was a one billion dollar project and Scotland absolutely needed it,” Hobday said. “But I think he never really had the money or the intention of finishing it.”
In response to Hobday’s sad lament, Trump International Scotland released a typically Trumpian statement: “There are very few, if any, investors in the sport that have done more for Scottish golf in the past decade than Trump.” It’s a familiar formula. Trump ruins what he touches, then blames and gaslights his victims for failing to acknowledge his genius.
Today the name Donald Trump is anathema to the people of Aberdeen. It’s unfortunate that millions of American voters don’t know him the way they do. But, sooner or later, everyone is ripped off by Donald Trump. There are eight million stories in the naked city of people Donald Donald Trump has screwed. This has been one of them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.