There was one issue he could not escape, much as he perhaps wanted to.
He was inevitably asked about Jeffrey Epstein, as the long running controversy about why he is refusing to release all the files held by the US government on the deceased sex offender followed him across the Atlantic.
A van displaying an old photograph of Trump at a party with Epstein was driving around Aberdeenshire to make sure the president could not escape the furore.
He told us for the first time why he fell out with the disgraced financier many years ago, saying that Epstein had poached staff from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and he refused to talk to him after that.
And he denied ever having sent a lewd drawing to Epstein (as reported by the Wall St Journal), claiming that he only ever draws very basic pictures of buildings.
The intrusion of the Epstein scandal into Trump’s Scottish trip was a reminder of what inevitably awaits him on his return to Washington but it did not seem to dent his buoyant mood.