The political and legal wranglings of former president Donald Trump may never be far from the headlines. But before his one-term residency in the White House, he was best known as the head of a family business that specialises in luxury real estate – an empire that stretches all the way to Scotland. Despite his self-styled approach as the ultimate dealmaker, Trump met his match when he went head-to-head with a Scottish fisherman at one of his most controversial developments, and now, he's returning to the site of their infamous conflict. Click or scroll to discover more…

With legal woes mounting, including a civil rape and defamation trial in New York, Donald Trump is seemingly all too eager to take a hiatus from the media frenzy in the US. On 1 May 2023, he flew to Aberdeen, Scotland to mark the beginning of a new project at his Balmedie golf club – a second golf course. Travelling with his son Eric Trump, the former president is pictured here disembarking his plane, the so-called 'Trump Force One', at Aberdeen Airport. Stepping onto Scottish soil, where he was met by two pipers, a red carpet and a 10-car motorcade, Trump told reporters: "It's great to be home – this was the home of my mother." 

In fact, Trump's latest project at his Aberdeenshire club is dedicated to his late mother, Mary Ann MacLeod, who was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides. To mark the breaking of ground on the MacLeod golf course, Trump attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the construction site on the Menie estate. The course will reportedly be designed by Dr Martin Hawtree, the mastermind behind the club's existing course. Trump has high hopes for the new addition: "We will build a course that will be fit to host many great championships in the future along with our championship links," he said. While Scotland may hold a fond place in the former president's heart, his business moves in Scotland have drawn the ire of locals in the past, and his Aberdeenshire club in particular has been plagued by controversy – let's take a look back at where it all started...

It’s been well-documented that Donald Trump is a golfing fanatic, racking up a reported 298 daytime visits to golf courses during his time as president. From New York to Florida, California, Virginia, New Jersey and North Carolina, the part of his business empire known as Trump Golf owns multiple properties across the USA where wealthy members are able to work on their swing. Internationally, there are resorts located in Dubai, Bali, Ireland and Scotland. Given Trump's Scottish heritage, it was particularly important to him to set up a base in Scotland.

The site of Balmedie near Aberdeen in northeast Scotland was selected and in 2006, Trump bought a 1,400-acre coastline plot with the intention of turning it into "the world's best golf course". The beach at Balmedie is known for having the fifth-largest dune system in Britain. It was named a Site of Special Scientific Interest thanks to the unique habitat of marram grass and wetlands that support local wildlife. The site was excavated in 2010, pictured here, a move that provoked the ire of many. Environmentalists were outraged at the threat to the 4,000-year-old natural wonder, and residents were even more incensed…

Perhaps the most vocal of these was Scottish fisherman and quarry worker Michael Forbes, who had lived on his 23-acre farm with his late mother, Molly, for a lifetime. He flat out refused to sell his home to Trump, which sat right in the middle of the proposed second hole and hotel site, and so started a feud between them that would go on for years.

In November 2007, Trump’s controversial property proposal was thrown out in a knife-edge vote by local councillors of Aberdeenshire Council's infrastructure services committee, after facing fierce opposition from local residents and environmental campaigners. But the decision was overturned in 2008 by the Scottish government, who said the economic benefit and thousands of promised jobs in the area outweighed the potential damage to the ecologically sensitive landscape or detriment to the community. 

Following the U-turn, work on the site began in 2009. Forbes was even supposedly enticed to relocate with an offer of £450,000 ($562k) and a job on the golf course paying £50,000 ($62k) a year, but he declined the offer. He told The Guardian: "I’ll never, ever sell to that loudmouth bully.” Infuriated by Forbes' refusal to move, Trump branded the Scotsman “a disgrace” and described his home as "slum-like, he lives like a pig" in a 2011 documentary entitled You've Been Trumped. 

According to the documentary, Trump staff even went as far as to reportedly remove a boat belonging to Forbes and fenced off parts of his land in 2010. Forbes' farm is now completely enclosed in the middle of the golf club resort. In a follow-up documentary in 2016 entitled You’ve Been Trumped Too, Forbes claims that the construction of a road took out their well and drinking water. Trump International has insisted it has "never, and would never, conduct the type of activity claimed" in the documentary. 

In 2022, more than 10 years on from his altercation with Trump, Michael Forbes revealed more details of their battle in an interview with Aberdeen Live. It's safe to say Forbes' first impressions of the former president were far from glowing: "When I met him all he talked about was Trump and money. I really regret to this day that I didn't knock him on his a*** then. They can please themselves, just leave me alone."

Forbes said in the interview: "[Trump] couldn't do anything to me because I own all the land round about me. The only thing he did was block my access to the beach where I did my salmon fishing... he knew I loved doing my salmon fishing, that's the only way he could get at me, but it just so happened that the government stopped the salmon fishing anyway."

Forbes also addressed the allegations he'd made in the 2016 documentary You’ve Been Trumped Too, regarding the Trump Organization obstructing his water access. He claimed: "They built a road near where my well is... when he built this road he burst the pipe and took it away and never replaced it, they deny doing it. Five years I went without water." He described how his mother, who was 86 at the time, had to use water from a nearby stream to wash. Forbes eventually took matters into his own hands: "One day I went up and the well was black, the water we were getting was running off the road and into the well. I went up on my mini digger, dug up the road, fixed my pipe and put the road back again. There were two security guards filming me but the water has been fine since."

It seems that Trump eventually accepted that Forbes was not a man who could be bought. The former president's repeated offers dwindled as the development progressed: "The last offer he made was £325,000 for my 23 acres of land, my fishing, the house, everything. That's what he offered me, now where can I get a house for that in Aberdeen, that's what got up my back." Forbes has become something of a local legend in Scotland since his clash with the former president. A portrait of Forbes and his wife was unveiled in the National Galleries of Scotland, and the farmer was also awarded the Top Scot award in 2012 at the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards.

Despite the issues and opposition facing the project, the Trump International Golf Links course opened in 2012. The original plan was for a £1 billion ($1.2bn) coastal resort with two golf courses, a hotel and around 1,000 holiday homes. However, the Trump Organization has so far reportedly invested £100 million ($125m) in the first phase of the development, with a total spend of £750 million ($936m) pledged. In this picture, you can see the turreted MacLeod Lodge, which is named after Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, and is the grand main building on the site.

Luxury housing was always part of the plan for the Balmedie site, with a man-made suburb of new-build houses called The Trump Estate reportedly in the works. Prices for these historic-style properties are forecast at £295,000 ($368k) for a two-bedroom cottage, going up to £1.3 million ($1.6m) for a five-bedroom manor house. In February 2022, it was reported that Aberdeenshire Council had granted permission in principle for the construction of 550 houses on the plot, which will include a mixture of residential units and holiday homes, along with shops and other community infrastructure. 

However, the resort's woes are seemingly far from over. In September 2011, the Trump Organization lodged a failed objection to the construction of a new wind farm off the coast near the new hotel and luxury housing development. In 2020, the sand dunes at Balmedie lost their special status, with countryside agency Nature Scot saying that they had been "partially destroyed" and irrevocably altered during the construction work. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic also had an adverse effect, with £1 million ($1.2m) in losses posted in 2020 and some £700,000 ($873k) in losses declared in 2021.

To make matters worse, the Aberdeenshire golf club's valuation has been put under the microscope in a civil lawsuit filed in September 2022 by New York District Attorney Letitia James. The filing accuses Donald Trump, alongside the Trump Organization and members of the Trump family, of inflating his net worth to gain tax benefits and more favourable loan conditions. The club was valued at £262 million ($327m) in 2014, but the lawsuit alleges that 80% of the valuation was based on the assumption that 2,500 homes could be developed on the site, when zoning approval had only been granted for less than 1,500 residential units. Only time will tell how the lawsuit unravels and if this controversial development can turn its fortunes around...

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