Donald Trump arrives in Scotland, his mother’s homeland

Donald Trump arrives on Friday on a private visit to Scotland on Friday, his mother’s native land: Mary Anne Macleod grew up on a poor island before emigrating at 18 in the United States, where she experienced a dazzling social ascent. During his stay, the American president will inaugurate his third Scottish golf course in the northeast of this United Kingdom nation.

“It’s good to be at home,” he proclaimed, landing in Scotland during a previous visit in 2023. “It was my mother’s homeland,” he said. If Donald Trump is happy to talk about his father, Fred Trump, a self-made Man, son of a German immigrant and real estate developer, he is more discreet about his mother, who died in 2000 to 88 years.

Mary Anne Macleod was born in 1912, on the island of Lewis, in the exterior Hebrides, in the northwest of Scotland, where an AFP team went to report in April. She grew up in the small village of Tong. Donald Trump had gone down there in 2008, the time for a photo in front of the family home.

Cousins of the president still live in the building, modernized since the time when Mary Anne Macleod lived there, but which remains extremely simple, in light gray plaster, with a slate roof, about 200 meters from the sea.

Difficult to make more different from the luxurious residence of Mar-A-Lago in Florida of the president or the Trump Tower in New York. The maternal grandfather of the American president was a fisherman, according to the British press which is based on local documents.

Mary Anne Macleod was the tenth and last child of the family. Her mother tongue was the Gaelic and it was at school that she learned English. Life was tough on Lewis, especially after the First World War, who had taken away many young men on the island. Following the example of an eldest sister and so many other Scotlers, Mary Anne embarked in Glasgow, in 1930, aboard the SS Transylvania, direction New York.

“Domestic,” she wrote on immigration papers in the profession. A sister of the president said that she had actually worked as a nanny in a wealthy family.

The fate of Mary Anne Macleod changes a few years later, when she meets Fred Trump, in an evening, in the story told by the family. The couple married in January 1936, in the rich district of the Upper East Side, in Manhattan.

Mary Anne Trump became American citizen in 1942. While Fred Trump built a real estate empire in New York, by building buildings for the middle class, in the popular districts of Queens and Brooklyn, she is involved in charitable works.

“Even at an advanced age, rich and respected, she went to Rolls-Royce Rose recovering the parts of washing machines in buildings belonging to the Trump,” said the Times of London in an article. Photos show her in New York high society, her blond hair raised in a large bun, reminiscent of her son’s hair.

She was “a great beauty”, “one of the fairest and charitable people I have met,” said Donald Trump, in rare confidences about her mother. On Twitter, who became X, he has often shared “an excellent advice” of his mother: “Have confidence in God and be faithful to yourself”.

In 2018, Theresa May, then British Prime Minister, had offered Donald Trump the family tree of his Scottish ancestors. On the island of Lewis, where there are less than 20,000 people, the name of MacLeod is extremely common. The inhabitants readily evoke Mary Anne Macleod, saying that she returned regularly to the island until her death. A sister of the president won the premises by giving a large sum of money to a retirement home.

On the other hand, many do not carry the American president in their hearts. In April, a banner tried in front of a store on the port of Stornoway, the largest city on the island: “Shame on you, Donald John!” #Democracy, ”it was written in big black letters. Since then, local authorities have asked for the banner to be withdrawn. But it is to go around the island this summer and the inhabitants are invited to affix their signature there.