The solar is urgent by way of the low gray clouds above Turnberry seaside in Ayrshire the place Alan Ringrose is strolling his canine. He shakes his head on the rising information from throughout the Atlantic.
“I feel America’s gone mad,” he says. “How will you elect a felony as president?”
Disbelief is his overriding emotion as the truth of a second Trump presidency sinks in. “I don’t get it. Maybe folks had been afraid to elect a black girl?”
Ringrose, who cares for the native bowling inexperienced in his retirement, gestures throughout the dunes to the terraced lawns of the five-star Trump Turnberry lodge. It’s one in all two luxurious {golfing} resorts owned by the president-elect in Scotland; the opposite is in Aberdeenshire. “He has finished so much for the world, however as a politician …” Ringrose trails off.
Additional down the windswept seaside, Elizabeth Cogan is taking her jack russell Molly for a stroll. She can be fast to acknowledge the funding Trump has made within the native financial system. However as a world chief? “It’s a complete catastrophe: he’s a fascist, he’s in opposition to ladies, he’s homophobic, he’s racist. It’s a shock as a result of I assumed folks would have come to their senses and realised what sort of man he’s.
“It’s troublesome with politics, as a result of you must respect completely different opinions. However look how he divides folks, the best way he treats immigrants.”
Of explicit concern to Cogan are the billionaires with whom Trump surrounds himself, a lot of whom wield highly effective affect, like Elon Musk. “Somebody with such wealth has no understanding of how regular folks reside,” says Cogan.
His victory will resonate far past the US, she provides, citing Ukraine, Gaza and the local weather as rapid areas of concern.
Cogan remembers the comic Janey Godley, who died final Saturday, protesting on this very seaside together with her succinct, handwritten signal studying “Trump is a cunt”, which introduced her worldwide viral fame, in addition to vitriol. “She was an odd working one who understood,” says Godley.
Trump, whose mom, Mary Anne Macleod, was born on the Isle of Lewis earlier than emigrating to New York on the age of 18, has had a vexed relationship with Scotland’s leaders: he clashed with Alex Salmond over his resort growth plans in Aberdeen and described Nicola Sturgeon as a “failed woke extremist”, whereas he referred to as the primary minster John Swinney’s backing of Kamala Harris final week “an insult” to his funding in Scotland by his enterprise Trump Worldwide.
Swinney formally congratulated Trump on Wednesday however raised issues concerning the potential affect of the proposed import tariffs on the Scotch whisky trade.
Dave McDade was a member of the Turnberry golf course till 2016, when sickness stopped him enjoying frequently. “It’s so costly now, [Trump] he’s put it out of attain of regular folks. I heard a spherical of golf prices £500.”
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Certainly, subsequent yr the price of a tee time for the Ailsa course, extensively ranked as among the best golf programs on the earth and former host to the Open Championship, will improve to £545, with greens charges rising to £1,000 at peak occasions.
Round lunchtime the course is sort of abandoned, with solely a handful of vehicles within the clubhouse automotive park which is surrounded by cabbage palms with an ornate central fountain that matches the one within the lodge’s courtyard.
“I’m shocked that individuals voted for him after all of the stuff he’s come out with,” provides McDade, who now performs on the extra inexpensive course in Stranraer.
Others choose to maintain their counsel on the person who, as one factors out, “pays quite a lot of native wages”. One other girl, with kin in the USA, says she has seen how Biden’s financial failures have affected them immediately and is glad that Trump has received.
Given the largely gloomy tenor of the native response, one other presents a glimmer of hope: “The one good factor is that he can’t run once more, so we simply need to get by way of the following 4 years.”
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