{"id":23573,"date":"2025-07-25T17:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T17:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23573\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T17:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T17:45:08","slug":"trumps-trip-to-his-scottish-golf-course-blurs-politics-and-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23573\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s trip to his Scottish golf course blurs politics and business"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) \u2014 Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand dunes of Scotland\u2019s northeastern coast rank among Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> favorite spots on earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, maybe in my very old age, I\u2019ll go there and do the most beautiful thing you\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Trump said in 2023, during his New York civil fraud trial<\/a>, talking about his plans for future developments on his property in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire.<\/p>\n

At 79 and back in the White House, Trump is making at least part of that pledge a reality, traveling to Scotland on Friday as his family\u2019s business prepares for the Aug. 13 opening of a new course it\u2019s billing as \u201cthe greatest 36 holes in golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump will be in Scotland until Tuesday and plans to talk trade with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer<\/a> and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Aberdeen area is already home to another of his courses, Trump International Scotland, and the Republican president also plans to visit a Trump course near Turnberry, around 200 miles (320 kilometers) away on Scotland\u2019s southwest coast.<\/p>\n

Using a presidential overseas trip \u2014 with its sprawling entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters \u2014 to help show off Trump-brand golf destinations demonstrates how the president has become increasingly comfortable intermingling his governing pursuits with promoting his family\u2019s business interests.<\/p>\n

The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest<\/a>, arguing Trump\u2019s business success before he entered politics was a key to his appeal with voters.<\/p>\n

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a \u201cworking trip.\u201d But she added Trump \u201chas built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments<\/a> and by the most elite players in the sport.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump family\u2019s new golf course has tee times for sale<\/p>\n

Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>. This time, his trip comes as the new golf course is about to debut and is already actively selling tee times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not cheap for the president to travel.<\/p>\n

The helicopters that operate as Marine One when the president is on board cost between $16,700 and nearly $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for fiscal year 2022. The modified Boeing 747s that serve as the iconic Air Force One cost about $200,000 per hour to fly. That\u2019s not to mention the military cargo aircraft that fly ahead of the president with his armored limousines and other official vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn\u2019t seem to see much of a difference,\u201d said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. \u201cIt\u2019s as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his first term, the Trump Organization<\/a> signed an ethics pact<\/a> barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks for Trump\u2019s second term allows them.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while he\u2019s in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, including plans to build luxury developments<\/a> in Qatar and Vietnam<\/a>, even as the administration negotiates tariff rates for those countries and around the globe. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s first Aberdeen course has sparked legal battles <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area\u2019s cliffs.<\/p>\n

It has struggled to turn a profit<\/a> and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed<\/a> nearby sand dunes. Trump\u2019s company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government\u2019s legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm<\/a>, arguing in part that it hurt golfers\u2019 views.<\/p>\n

And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s company\u2019s initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he\u2019d be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged.<\/p>\n

Judge Arthur Engoron<\/a> found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $355 million in fines<\/a> \u2014 a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $510 million as Trump appeals. <\/p>\n

Golfers-in-chief<\/p>\n

Family financial interests aside, Trump isn\u2019t the first sitting U.S. president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn\u2019t play.<\/p>\n

Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with soccer, because of fears both were distracting men from practicing archery \u2014 then considered vital to national defense. <\/p>\n

The first U.S. president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn\u2019t working hard enough. <\/p>\n

Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, said Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Warren G. Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake. <\/p>\n

Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House\u2019s South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it.<\/p>\n

Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Trump upgraded during his first term, Trostel said. <\/p>\n

John F. Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard\u2019s golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California\u2019s renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say, between President Trump and President John F. Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we\u2019ve had in the White House,\u201d Trostel said. <\/p>\n

Trump, Trostel said, has a handicap index \u2014 how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score \u2014 of a very strong 2.5, though he\u2019s not posted an official round with the U.S. Golf Association since 2021. That\u2019s better than Joe Biden\u2019s handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Obama, who once described his own handicap as an \u201chonest 13.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House described Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) \u2014 Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[19312,1780,19313,49,48,1376,19311,2841,19315,622,6512,19308,19316,16938,7738,19317,898,714,16378,82,18374,19314,16942,19310,19309,8615,19307,883],"class_list":{"0":"post-23573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-arthur-engoron","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-bill-clinton","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-dwight-d-eisenhower","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-george-w-bush","17":"tag-golf","18":"tag-joe-biden","19":"tag-john-f-kennedy","20":"tag-jordan-libowitz","21":"tag-keir-starmer","22":"tag-legal-proceedings","23":"tag-mike-trostel","24":"tag-political-news","25":"tag-politics","26":"tag-scotland","27":"tag-sports","28":"tag-taylor-rogers","29":"tag-u-s-secret-service","30":"tag-united-kingdom-government","31":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","32":"tag-vladimir-putin","33":"tag-washington-news","34":"tag-william-howard-taft","35":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}