Stephen Nulty 9:04 pm on July 14, 2018
Tags: greenpeace, , , , , turnberry,   

Saturday 14 July 2018 – Trump spends the day at Turnberry and finally comes face-to-face with protesters

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On his third day in the UK and his last full day before heading for Finland tomorrow to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, the President spent the afternoon playing golf at his Ayrshire golf course at Turnberry which he bought in 2014. He also owns the Menie Estate golf course in Aberdeen.  Trump clearly enjoys playing golf and was no doubt hoping to spend a quiet weekend relaxing with his favourite sport and members of his family at his own golf course.  Unfortunately, for Trump, he was finally to come face-to-face with the protesters who have been protesting his visit to the UK but have largely been kept well away from the President.  Today, despite a massive security operation that included surrounding Turnberry with UK police and Secret Service snipers, the protesters got within shouting distance of the President.  The President, for the first time, was able to see and hear a sample of those who were opposed to him, his policies, and his visit to the UK.

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Even more dramatically, a paraglider from the Greenpeace organisation managed to bypass the heavy security and flew right across the Turnberry golf course, past the club house and within yards of President Trump who can be seen quickly ducking inside the club house and out-of-sight. The paraglider was towing a yellow banner with the phrase “Trump, well below par #Resist”. The President was in no danger from the protest.  Greenpeace had warned the police about 15 minutes earlier that the paraglider was on his way and the Secret Service were duly informed.  Nevertheless, this was an extraordinary breach of the security bubble around the President and the Secret Service and Police Scotland will have embarrassing questions to answer.  Furthermore, although the Secret Service didn’t take the paraglider as an imminent threat or attempt to bring him down, the danger of that happening was always there.

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Photos: police and snipers at Turnberry and the ‘baby blimp’ makes an appearance at a  protest in Edinburgh after being banned from Turnberry and the Scottish parliament at Holyrood.

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said of the paraglider protest: “It wasn’t dangerous at all. We let the police know about 10 or 15 minutes before that we were coming in. We phoned them, we had someone on the police line who informed them. We thought it was important that the president actually saw a real-life protester. There’s tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people on the streets around the UK.”  No arrest has been made over the protest but the police are investigating and looking for the paraglider. Assistant Chief Constable Mark Williams, however, remarked: “There are armed assets protecting the president – both from the US Secret Service and ourselves and the Met Police, who offer a  close protection function as well. And there’s no doubt anybody who breaches security around him puts themselves in grave danger. On this occasion we could assess the situation and we realised there was no direct threat to the president however it’s absolutely something that is very serious.”

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Photos: demonstrations in Edinburgh.

Donald Trump has frequently spoken of his affinity for Scotland.  His mother was born in Lewis, the largest of the Western Isles, and he has made frequent visits to Scotland over the years.  This, however, is his first visit to both Scotland and the UK since becoming President in January 2017.  He was greeted upon his arrival at Prestwick Airport last night by Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell, who is a representative of the UK Government and not the Scottish Government.  The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, will not be meeting the President while he is north of the border.  Her dislike of him and his policies are clear but she was magnanimous about meeting the President in the future: “If the opportunity arises to meet the president I will do that and I’m sure if the opportunity arises in the future we will have lots to talk about, including the close and very important links between our two countries.”

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Photos: a pro-Trump gathering outside the US embassy in London.

Protests against Trump’s presence in the UK continued today in the Scottish capital Edinburgh, as well as at Turnberry and Glasgow.  In Edinburgh around 9,000 protesters walked from the Scottish Parliament  to the Meadows for a “carnival of resistance.”  The ‘baby blimp’ which flew over Westminster in London yesterday morning made an appearance at the Meadows.  There were also some smaller protests in London by Welcome Trump and the Free Tommy Robinson groups.  Tommy Robinson is an English right-wing activist currently serving a 13-month prison sentence for potentially prejudicing a court case.  There were some clashes at the London protests and the Met police said that 12 people were arrested for violent disorder, assault or public order offences.  It is not clear if these people were anti-Trump protesters or people from pro-Trump and the pro-Tommy Robinson protests.  Police Scotland have said that there have been no arrests in the protests across Scotland today and all the anti-Trump protests, although loud and vocal, have been ones with a festival mood or, as one reporter in Scotland put it, a carnival of mockery.

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Liam Fox, the UK Government’s International Trade Secretary, joined in with those in the past three days who have tried to dismiss the mass protests against Trump as embarrassing to both the protesters themselves and the the country.  Although those in opposition to the protests claim to support the right to peaceful protest they also seem to think that no-one should protest as it would embarrass the President, our Government, or our country.  Considering that the most recent YouGov poll suggests that only 11% of Britons approve of Mr Trump, the opposition to protests by Fox and others are largely falling on death ears.  Mr Fox said that the anti-Trump campaigners were an “embarrassment to themselves” and that the protests “did not reflect the genuine good manners and hospitality of the British people.”

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Trump will finally leave the UK tomorrow to fly to Finland.  Most people will be glad to see the back of him and we can be sure that it will be sometime, if ever, before President Trump makes another official visit to the country.  No doubt the Government and the Trump administration will laud the visit as a great success – despite the protests and his disastrous interview with The Sun in which he dissed the Prime Minister and her Brexit plan and praised her primary political rival.  In reality, he was largely never welcome in the country and at best was tolerated because he was President of the United States of America and because of the need to maintain a relationship with his country.  In reality, he will leave behind deep divisions his interview has added to within the Conservative Party, the Government and the country over the implementation of Brexit.  His comments regarding Brexit and his opposition to the proposals put forward by Prime Minister Theresa May have the potential of creating a political crisis that threatens to not only scupper the Government’s Brexit plan but could contribute to the bringing down of Mrs May herself.

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Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Trump will now move on to his meeting with President Putin, which he said would be easier than his visit to the UK or his visit earlier this week to the NATO meetings in Brussels.  There have been calls for the meeting with Putin to be cancelled following the indictment in the US of 12 Russians accused of hacking offences.  Those 12 people are in Russia and out-of-reach of the US prosecutors, but it is already generating more controversy to the ongoing investigations against the Trump presidential campaign team for alleged collusion with Russia who have been shown to have interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.  The White House have said that the Putin meeting will go ahead.


People, including Mrs May hopefully, have been putting pressure on Trump to discuss the indictments and the continuing investigation of Russian collusion in the 2016 US Presidential election with Putin on Monday.  He said he would bring the subject up but pointed out that Putin will probably simply deny the allegations and therefore Trump will be impotent to argue further.

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Mrs May has reportedly also requested that Trump brings up with Putin the recent nerve agent poisonings in Salisbury in the UK which have left one person dead and hospitalised three others.  The nerve agent was shown to be a Soviet-era nerve agent and it seems certain that Russia and Putin himself were behind the attack and/or had given approval for it or been aware of it.  Again, Putin and Russia deny they had anything to do with it and have claimed that the nerve agent was developed in the UK.  Few in Britain and the international community believe Russia’s claims but there is little anyone can seemingly do about it.  It is questionable whether Trump will bring the subject up with Putin.  Some commentators in the US and UK have pointed out that Trump needs to leave his meeting with the Russian President with some positive news, accusing him of a nerve agent attack in the UK will threaten Trump’s chances of a positive outcome – whatever a positive outcome actually means for Trump and his administration.


The great fear, fuelled by Mr Trump’s repeated praise for President Putin, is that Trump will fail to confront Putin when they meet.  Trump has made some attempts to punish Russia through sanctions but his seeming likeness and respect for President Putin is at odds with the reality that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, has seemingly authorised a nerve agent attack in the UK and is now being accused of widespread hacking of US political email systems, including those of Hillary Clinton.  All this does not even mention the continuing occupation of the Crimea in the Ukraine. Attempts to get Trump to confront Russia over this are simply met with Trump blaming President Obama for allowing the occupation of Crimea to take place.  This does nothing but add to the belief that Trump is unable or unwilling to stand up to Putin in any meaningful manner. 

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This creates tension between the US and its allies, especially its NATO allies.  Mr Trump’s clear dislike and disrespect – and clear lack of understanding of its purpose – of NATO is threatening the effectiveness of NATO.  His claims that the NATO leaders had agreed to double their GDP defence commitment to 4% by 2024 was shown to be a blatant lie – NATO leaders completely denied this had happened.  The NATO leaders have previously agreed to a 2% GDP contribution to NATO and the US agreed to this at the time.  Trump is now demanding they pay more and the US pay less.  It is somewhat a fair argument by him that the NATO countries are not contributing enough.  Many have not yet reached the 2% commitment and the US is currently paying around 3.5% of GDP towards NATO.  The whole survival of NATO is in question with Trump’s stance and this, again, is simply playing directly into Putin’s hands. 


Russia has always hated NATO and its central premise that an attack by Russia, or anyone else, on a NATO country would be treated as an attack on the US and all other NATO countries.  This premise has maintained peace in Europe and beyond for decades and the strength of the US backing NATO has been central to that success.  Trump is now talking – although it may only be bluff and bluster in order to gain concessions – of the US going it alone and leaving NATO.  This would be disastrous for Europe and the other NATO nations – including the United States.


President Putin has already demonstrated with his invasion of the Crimea that he believes the West is impotent to stop him.  His annexation of the Crimea in Ukraine – which is not a NATO country – is to some extent Russia’s way of testing what they can get away with. It could very well be a prelude to further attempts to occupy other countries, most likely in the Balkans. This is a path Hitler took in the 1930s, testing the resolve of Britain, France and others and responding to the  appeasement with further expansionism – that ended with World War II, the Holocaust and the death of up to 80 million people.  Putin will be enthused by Trump’s dislike of NATO and even by his support for the UK leaving the European Union.  Putin and Russia would like nothing more than both NATO and the EU to be in disarray or to even collapse. 


Trump’s  America First agenda threatens to strengthen Russia by weakening NATO and the US’s relations with other countries – especially those in Europe and the Balkans.  America First may sound a good idea for the US but in reality the US has been at the heart of international politics and economy for a century and ending or diffusing that role will ultimately weaken its allies and that will have dramatic and dangerous consequences for the United States itself.

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