{"id":30985,"date":"2025-07-29T22:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30985\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T22:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:14:07","slug":"trump-opens-scotland-golf-course-on-taxpayer-funded-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30985\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Opens Scotland Golf Course on Taxpayer-Funded Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPresident Donald Trump<\/a> continued his Profit Off the Presidency World Tour this week with a stop in Scotland<\/a>, where he opened a new private golf<\/a> course. You, dear taxpayer, footed the bill for most of the trip.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Monday, Trump cut the ribbon at the Trump International Golf Links Aberdeen, which will officially open to the paying public on Aug. 13. The president was accompanied by his sons, Eric and Don Jr., who have taken the helm of their fathers real estate, licensing, and growing cryptocurrency empire while he occupies the White House. Trump wielded a pair of golden scissors and hit the inaugural tee for the course, all set to a backing chorus of bagpipes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have a world that\u2019s had some conflict, but we\u2019ve ironed out a lot of it,\u201d Trump told<\/a> those gathered to witness the grand opening, as Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine still rages and Israel continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have a great and peaceful world. And on a much smaller scale, this will be a tremendously successful place, a place where people can come and enjoy life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump was reportedly<\/a> asked on Air Force One about promoting his own businesses while on an official trip in Scotland. \u201cI haven\u2019t heard that,\u201d he said. \u201cDid you get to see my drive on the first hole? Pretty long. That\u2019s not Joe Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe inauguration of the golf course took place on the second-to-last day of Trump\u2019s formal state visit to Scotland, where he met with<\/a> British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The trip came as the president continues to fend off questions<\/a> about his relationship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and faces increased pressure to respond to famine conditions in Gaza<\/a>. On Saturday, during a round of golf at his other Scottish golf course, Trump Turnberry, the president ducked a question about Epstein before speeding off in a caravan of golf carts while blasting \u201cMemories,\u201d<\/a> from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to an analysis by Huffpost<\/a>, Trump\u2019s five-day trip to Scotland cost taxpayers around $10 million in travel, security, logistics, and lodging. While his visit with state leaders is the official reason for the expense, the visit is another blatant instance of the president dipping his hands into public coffers in order to forward his and his family\u2019s private business ventures. The White House is helping him do it, sharing videos<\/a> of the ribbon-cutting ceremony on their official social media accounts, and using clips from Trump\u2019s remarks at the event to bash<\/a> the \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump and the government\u2019s promotion of the president\u2019s private golf resort is yet another example of the historic levels of corruption<\/a> and lawlessness that are undergirding the authoritarian streak of Trump\u2019s second stint in the White House. It also further demonstrates how far he\u2019s come from the somehow not-as-bad, not-as-open corruption of his first presidency. As Rolling Stone reported<\/a> in May, according to those close to Trump, the president has gossiped to confidants that it was \u201cstupid\u201d of him to leave so much money on the table during his first administration and that only a fool would make the same mistake during his second.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump is aggressively following through on that vow, in ways that suggest he\u2019s not even attempting to veil his corrupt self-interest from the American public anymore.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring his first term, he\u2019d at least lie about it from time to time.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn late 2019, the first Trump administration brought upon themselves yet another public-relations headache when Vice President Mike Pence decided to book a room at Trump\u2019s golf resort and hotel near Doonbeg, Ireland, during the vice president\u2019s official visit to the nation.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the administration took very predictable heat for shoveling more public money into Trump\u2019s own pocket, the president told the media that he had \u201cno involvement\u201d with the hotel booking and that \u201cpeople like my product, what can I tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a lie. According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, prior to Pence\u2019s Ireland trip, Trump personally spoke to Pence and directly pressured his vice president to book his stay at the Trump-owned resort. When the president was told it might look bad, Trump replied it would look \u201cworse\u201d if Pence stayed elsewhere when Trump\u2019s hotel was right there. (Naturally, when the public backlash ensued, he threw Pence under the bus.)<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump, the sources add, would insist during his first administration that he and other senior government personnel routinely patronize different international Trump family properties, telling officials that if they didn\u2019t, people might think there\u2019s something wrong with the hotels or golf courses.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBack then, the president and his underlings would sometimes have to make up a cover story. Today, he and his new administration are just going with it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt really is something,\u201d one of the sources, a former senior administration official, tells Rolling Stone. \u201cThey are just bragging about doing now what we all were told to downplay or lie about in his first term. \u2026 Incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump continued his Profit Off the Presidency World Tour this week with a stop in Scotland,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,2490,755,5994,85,23584],"class_list":{"0":"post-30985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-scotland","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-trump-organization"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}