Let us read it for you. Listen now.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
BALMEDIE, Scotland — Golf and Scotland are close to U.S. President Donald Trump’s heart, and both were in play Tuesday as he opened a new eponymous course in the land of his mother’s birth, capping a five-day trip that was largely focused on promoting his family’s properties.
Dressed for golf and sporting a white hat that said “USA,” Trump lavished rare praise on the contingent of journalists who had gathered to cover the event.
“Today they’re not fake news,” Trump said. “Today they’re wonderful news.”
The golf-focused trip gave him a chance to escape Washington’s summer heat, but he answered questions about Jeffrey Epstein, the deepening food crisis in Gaza and other issues that trailed him across the Atlantic.
Trump on Monday expressed concern over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more to get food aid to hungry Palestinians.
Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s assertion Sunday that “there is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza,” Trump said he didn’t know but added, “I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly because those children look very hungry.”
The president also offered a reason why he banished Epstein from his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., years ago, saying it was because the disgraced financier “stole people that worked for me.” A top White House aide said last week that Epstein was kicked out for being a “creep.”
Flanked by sons Eric and Donald Jr., Trump counted to three and wielded a pair of golden scissors to cut a red ribbon marking the ceremonial opening of the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie on Scotland’s northern coast.
“This has been an unbelievable development,” Trump said before the ribbon cutting. He thanked Eric, who designed the course, saying his work on the project was “truly a labor of love for him.”
Immediately afterward, Trump, Eric Trump and two professional golfers teed off on the first hole and had plans to play a full 18 before the president’s return to Washington on Tuesday night.
Trump’s shot had a solid sound and soared straight, high and relatively far. Clearly pleased, he turned to the cameras and did an almost half bow.
“He likes the course, ladies and gentlemen,” Eric Trump said.
Billed as the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, is hosting back-to-back weekend tournaments before it begins offering rounds to the public on Aug. 13.
Trump worked some official business into the trip by holding talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and reaching a trade framework for tariffs between the U.S. and the European Union’s 27 member countries.
But the trip itself was centered around golf, and the presidential visit served to raise the new course’s profile.
Trump’s assets are in a trust and his sons are running the family business while he’s in the White House. Any business generated at the course will ultimately enrich the president when he leaves office.
The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012.
Trump’s mother, the late Mary Anne MacLeod, was born on the Isle of Lewis on the north coast.
“We love Scotland here. My mother was born here, and she loved it,” Trump said Tuesday. She visited “religiously once a year” during the summer with his sisters, he said.
