Protesters in Scotland say they will mount a wave of resistance as US President Donald Trump prepares to travel to the country on Friday for a five-day private visit.
Trump is traveling to his golf resort in the small village of Turnberry, on the west coast, where he will meet UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, before going to his other resort near Aberdeen, on the other side of Scotland, and open an 18-hole course dedicated to his Scottish-born mother Mary.
Several protest groups, ranging from trade unions and climate justice campaigners to sections of the American diaspora and Palestinian and Ukrainian advocacy groups, are planning to demonstrate against the US president under the umbrella of the “Stop Trump Coalition.” Protests are scheduled for Saturday in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dumfries.
Police Scotland are expected to deploy thousands of officers during Trump’s visit, according to PA Media.
Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond told CNN in a statement that the visit “will require a significant police operation using local, national and specialist resources from across Police Scotland, supported by colleagues from other UK police forces.” Trump himself is expected to stay at his golf resorts, away from the public.
Scotland, ruled for decades by a left-of-center devolved government, has a long history of protesting against Trump. When he visited his Scottish golf courses during his first presidential term, police estimated that 5,000 people marched through Edinburgh in protest.
On Friday, Scottish pro-independence newspaper The National printed a front page with the headline “Convicted US felon to arrive in Scotland.”
“I don’t think many Scottish people would feel he’s welcome,” one Scottish resident Anna Acquroff told Reuters in Glasgow. “I think it’s an embarrassment that he is coming here at all. Personally.”
Not everyone is so opposed to the Trump visit, however. Another Glaswegian, Keith Bean, told Reuters he thought Trump was “welcome to come” because “talking is always good. To divide and keep people separate from one another without discussing, it tends to create more problems than conversation.”
While in Scotland, Trump will also meet its First Minister John Swinney, who said he will “raise global and humanitarian issues of significant importance, including the unimaginable suffering we are witnessing in Gaza, and ensure Scotland’s voice is heard at the highest levels of government across the world,” according to PA.
This visit to Scotland marks a distraction from Trump’s current domestic political troubles over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein – an accused sex trafficker and disgraced financier who died by suicide in 2019.
Already, however, that ongoing turmoil has seeped into Trump’s visit. The White House removed the Wall Street Journal from the trip’s press pool after the publication ran a story which described a collection of letters gifted to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, including a note bearing Trump’s name and an outline of a naked woman. Trump filed a lawsuit the next day claiming defamation “because no authentic letter or drawing exists.”
Trump will return to the UK in September for an “unprecedented” second state visit at the invitation of King Charles, which is unlikely to have any public-facing events.
Typically, second-term US presidents are not invited for a second state visit. In keeping with tradition, former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush were offered lunch or tea with the monarch during their second administrations.