Donald Trump has left Scotland after a five-day working holiday.
He met with political leaders and made comments about the UK-US trade deal, starvation in Gaza, and applying pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
The US President also cut the ribbon and teed off in celebration of a new 18-hole course at his Trump International Golf Links on the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire.
Here’s a round-up of what he said while he was here.
Scotland
Getty Images“My mother was born in Scotland, and it’s an incredible place, a beautiful place,” he told reporters as he stood on the steps of his Turnberry golf resort.
Trump said he has a “great love” for Scotland and that he wanted the country to “thrive”.
He said his mother Mary Anne MacLeod would return to her homeland “once a year” for a visit.
“So yeah, it gives me a feeling, you know it’s different, you go to another country, you have no relationship to it… but it’s different when your mother was born here,” he said.
The President also said he did not want to “get involved” in British domestic politics when asked for his opinion on plans for a second referendum on Scottish independence.
Trump referred to the suggestion that such a referendum could only take place once in a generation, telling reporters: “There was a little bit of a restriction, like 50 or 75 years, before you could take another vote because, you know, a country can’t go through that too much.”
Gaza
Speaking about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Trump said the children “look very hungry”.
The President has said he is “working together” with Israel “to try and get things straightened out” in Gaza amid warnings of severe mass starvation in the enclave.
After opening his new golf course in Menie, Aberdeenshire, a reporter from the crowd asked the US President “what will you say next to Benjamin Netanyahu”, the prime minister of Israel.
“We’re working together to try and get things straightened out,” Trump said.
Earlier during his speech at the course, the US leader said he would fly back to the Washington to “put out fires all over the world”.
Ukraine
Getty ImagesTrump suggested he would reduce the 50-day deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.
The President said he was “very disappointed” with Vladimir Putin.
“We thought we had that settled numerous times, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever,” Trump said.
“We’re going to have to look and I’m going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number, because I think I already know the answer, what’s going to happen.”
Energy
Trump said Scotland has “the ugliest windmills I’ve ever seen”.
He said the “ugly monsters” were “destroying the beauty” of Scottish fields and waterways.
“Wind is a disaster,” Trump said, “Wind is the most expensive form of energy. When we go to Aberdeen you’ll see some of the ugliest windmills you’ve ever seen.
“They’re the height of a 50-story building. You could take 1,000 times more energy from a hole in the ground. It’s called oil and gas, and you have it in the North Sea.”
Trump said he had restricted the construction of wind turbines in the United States because they “kill all your birds”, and he claimed that wind needs “massive subsidy”.
While in Scotland he also hit out at taxes on North Sea oil, saying the resource is a “treasure chest for the United Kingdom”.
“Incentivize the drillers, fast. A vast fortune to be made for the UK, and far lower energy costs for the people,” he wrote on his Truth Social network.
Immigration
The President was also asked about his advice for dealing with the small boats crisis in the UK.
“If you are stopping the wrong people, my hats are off to you,” Trump said.
The President said if the “boats are loaded up with bad people, and they usually are because other countries don’t send their best”, then he said the UK is doing a “fantastic” thing.
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