President Donald Trump continued his Profit Off the Presidency World Tour this week with a stop in Scotland, where he opened a new private golf course. You, dear taxpayer, footed the bill for most of the trip.
On 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.
“We have a world that’s had some conflict, but we’ve ironed out a lot of it,” Trump told those gathered to witness the grand opening, as Russia’s war against Ukraine still rages and Israel continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza. “We’re 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.”
Trump was reportedly asked on Air Force One about promoting his own businesses while on an official trip in Scotland. “I haven’t heard that,” he said. “Did you get to see my drive on the first hole? Pretty long. That’s not Joe Biden.”
The inauguration of the golf course took place on the second-to-last day of Trump’s formal state visit to Scotland, where he met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The trip came as the president continues to fend off questions about his relationship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and faces increased pressure to respond to famine conditions in Gaza. 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 “Memories,” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.
According to an analysis by Huffpost, Trump’s 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’s private business ventures. The White House is helping him do it, sharing videos of the ribbon-cutting ceremony on their official social media accounts, and using clips from Trump’s remarks at the event to bash the “fake news.”
Trump and the government’s promotion of the president’s private golf resort is yet another example of the historic levels of corruption and lawlessness that are undergirding the authoritarian streak of Trump’s second stint in the White House. It also further demonstrates how far he’s come from the somehow not-as-bad, not-as-open corruption of his first presidency. As Rolling Stone reported in May, according to those close to Trump, the president has gossiped to confidants that it was “stupid” 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.
Trump is aggressively following through on that vow, in ways that suggest he’s not even attempting to veil his corrupt self-interest from the American public anymore.
During his first term, he’d at least lie about it from time to time.
In 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’s golf resort and hotel near Doonbeg, Ireland, during the vice president’s official visit to the nation.
When the administration took very predictable heat for shoveling more public money into Trump’s own pocket, the president told the media that he had “no involvement” with the hotel booking and that “people like my product, what can I tell you.”
It was a lie. According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, prior to Pence’s 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 “worse” if Pence stayed elsewhere when Trump’s hotel was right there. (Naturally, when the public backlash ensued, he threw Pence under the bus.)
Trump, 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’t, people might think there’s something wrong with the hotels or golf courses.
Back 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.
“It really is something,” one of the sources, a former senior administration official, tells Rolling Stone. “They are just bragging about doing now what we all were told to downplay or lie about in his first term. … Incredible.”
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