Think Donald Trump is a clown? He's a serious politician and a warning to Scotland
The success of Donald Trump’s brand of populism shows why Scotland may be susceptible to messages from politicians like Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn
I have some advice for John Swinney as he prepares for his chat with Donald Trump. Expected the unexpected. The President of the United States, who has popped over the Atlantic for a long weekend break at his golf courses in Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire, is no ordinary world leader.
Not for him the niceties of protocol, the firm handshakes, the carefully scripted exchanges, drafted weeks in advance by diplomats. The Donald could, and may well, do or say anything. Theresa May never fully recovered from Trump holding her hand as they strolled through the White House gardens in early 2017.
Twenty years ago, I was a nervous press officer standing outside the lift in the lobby of Trump Tower, waiting for the signal to take the then First Minister up to Donald Trump’s penthouse office for a meet and greet, as had been arranged with his office. Jack McConnell was in New York on a short trip to promote Scotland as a great place for inward investment.
Trump’s hidden mic
Scottish Enterprise officials had set up a meeting with Trump, whose mother Mary Anne Macleod was from the Western Isles, after the property developer turned TV star expressed an interest in building a world-class golf resort on the North East coast.
The lift doors suddenly opened and out swept Trump, with a camera crew in tow, shouting “Where’s the First Minister?” What followed was a classic Trump meeting. He insisted on doing press interviews first, which delighted the small Scottish media pack who were with us.
Then, on the way to lunch in the Trump Tower restaurant, he tried to make the First Minister wear one of his signature red baseball caps, emblazoned with his then-famous catchphrase “You’re Fired”, from his hit TV show The Apprentice.
READ MORE: Donald Trump in Scotland: Here are 18 pictures of protests on the President's previous visits
Trump knew full well that if he had succeeded, the picture would have been splashed on the front page of every Scottish newspaper. I am grateful to this day that the FM saw through his schoolboy jape. Then, just as the burger and fries were served, McConnell asked his host to remove the microphone he had hidden under his tie.
A shamefaced Trump apologised, saying he always wore one in case he came across anything ‘interesting’ for his TV show. An amusing tale, and one that says more about the 47th President than any number of Foreign Office briefings. Another word of advice, Mr Swinney. Check for hidden mics.
‘Three-time loser’
Trump is the world’s biggest show-off. He has to be the centre of attention, whether he is meeting with the war-weary president of Ukraine or jousting with his erstwhile best friend, Elon Musk. Everything he says and does is content for TV networks or social media. And he has the attention span of a teenage girl scrolling TikTok.
Only his beloved golf holds his interest for longer than a few minutes, and his weekend in Scotland will be no different. He also ditches people as soon as they are no longer useful to him. His friendship with Alex Salmond ended in tears when Trump objected to plans for windfarms near his Menie golf resort.
Salmond dubbed Trump a “three-time loser” while Trump hit back, calling Salmond a “has been” with a “bloated ego”. Take any compliment with a pinch of salt, First Minister. He doesn’t mean a word he says.
But as Trump flies back to Washington and Swinney and his team review the weekend’s events, there is a far bigger lesson to be drawn from Trump’s flying visit than that the President is a shameless exhibitionist. He is also a very successful politician whose populist messaging now appeals to a large swathe of America, and not just white, working-class rednecks – as the Democrats tried to argue before November 2024.
A recent analysis of his election win by the Pew Research Center shows that he has built a diverse coalition of supporters from across Hispanic, Black and Asian communities and expanded his base of white, blue-collar, non-college educated voters. Extremism, as promoted by Trump, is now mainstream in the land of the free.
Trump supporters in Scotland
There may be thousands of Scots protesting his visit this weekend, screaming in anger about Gaza, the climate crisis and what they see as the damage Trump has done to the “very principles of justice and humanity”. But the silent majority of voters will scarcely give the president’s PR jaunt a second thought, and some will positively welcome him, pleased that he has singled out his mother’s homeland for his first ‘private’ overseas visit since his election.
Trump is often characterised by his opponents as a clown but, as he has shown, it is the politician who speaks directly to people in blunt, often politically ‘incorrect’ language who is more likely to succeed in today’s unsettled and unsettling world. Voters, whether in Pennsylvania or Scotland, are disillusioned by career politicians who appear more interested in progressive issues like gender identity than everyday concerns such as the price of eggs or coffee.
It was Trump’s visceral appeal, more than his policy platform, that won him the popular vote last year, and it is not hard to imagine home-grown populists like Nigel Farage on the right and Jeremy Corbyn, with his new left-wing party, having a similar effect on Scottish voters.
John Swinney has promised that over the next few days, Scotland will be “a platform to make its voice heard on the issues that matter, including war, peace, justice and democracy”. But it is the voices of the people busy trying to make ends meet while caring for their families that Swinney – and Scotland’s other mainstream parties – need to heed in the run-up to the Holyrood elections next May.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.