<div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Lashed by cold winds and overlooking choppy, steel-gray North Sea waters, the breathtaking sand dunes of Scotland's northeastern coast rank among </span><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/donald-trump" rel="" target="" title=""><span>Donald Trump's</span></a><span> favorite spots on earth.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>"At some point, maybe in my very old age, I'll go there and do the most beautiful thing you've ever seen," Trump said in 2023, during his New York civil fraud trial, talking about his plans for future developments on his property in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>At 79 and back in the White House, Trump is making at least part of that pledge a reality, landing in Scotland on Friday as his family's business prepares for the August 13 opening of a new golf course bearing his name.</span></div></div><div><div id="adspot-mobile-medium"></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><strong><span>READ MORE: </span></strong><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/world/usa-plane-southwest-airlines-flight-headed-to-las-vegas-plunge-response-to-nearby-aircraft/29e44239-5e3e-4390-9021-adbd6be393e1"><strong><span>US flight takes dramatic plunge in response to nearby aircraft</span></strong></a><strong><span></span></strong></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump will be in Scotland until Tuesday, and plans to talk trade with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The Aberdeen area is already home to another of his courses, Trump International Scotland, and the Republican president is also visiting a Trump course near Turnberry, around 320 kilometers away on Scotland's southwest coast. </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump said upon arrival on Friday evening that his son is "gonna cut a ribbon" for the new course during his trip. </span></div></div><div><div class="OUTBRAIN" data-reactroot="" data-src="//www.9news.com.au/world/donald-trump-trip-to-scotland-new-golf-course-opening-blurs-politics-and-business/fc369049-6ca1-4569-8f6a-1b0e223d779d" data-widget-id="AR_5"></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Eric Trump also went with his father to break ground on the project back in 2023.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Using a presidential overseas trip — with its sprawling entourage of advisers, White House and support staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters — to help show off Trump-brand golf destinations demonstrates how the president has become increasingly comfortable intermingling his governing pursuits with promoting his family's business interests.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The White House has brushed off questions about potential conflicts of interest, arguing that Trump's business success before he entered politics was a key to his appeal with voters.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the Scotland swing a "working trip." </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>But she added Trump "has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport."</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><h3><span>Trump family's new golf course has tee times for sale</span></h3></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But this trip comes as the new golf course is already actively selling tee times.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>"We're at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn't seem to see much of a difference," said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for the ethics watchdog organisation Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>"It's as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organisation."</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>During his first term, the Trump Organisation signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks for Trump's second term allows them.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump's assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organisation while he's in the White House. </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, including plans to build luxury developments in Qatar and Vietnam, even as the administration negotiates tariff rates for those countries and around the globe.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><h3><span>Trump's first Aberdeen course sparked legal battles</span></h3></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump's existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area's cliffs.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>It has struggled to turn a profit and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump's company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government's legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it hurt golfers' views.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump's company's initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he'd be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $US355 million ($541 million) in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $US510 million ($778 million) as Trump appeals.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><h3><span>Golfers-in-chief</span></h3></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Family financial interests aside, Trump isn't the first sitting US president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn't play.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with soccer, because of fears both were distracting men from practicing archery — then considered vital to national defence.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The first US president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn't working hard enough.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, said Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Warren G. Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson's swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House's South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Trump upgraded during his first term, Trostel said.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>John F. Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard's golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California's renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>"I'd say, between President Trump and President John F. Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we've had in the White House," Trostel said.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>Trump, Trostel said, has a handicap index — how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score — of a very strong 2.5, though he's not posted an official round with the US Golf Association since 2021. </span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>That's better than Joe Biden's handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Obama, who once described his own handicap as an "honest 13."</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><span>The White House described Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap.</span></div></div><div class="block-content"><div class="styles__Container-sc-1ylecsg-0 goULFa"><a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/how-to-follow-9news-digital/29855bb1-ad3d-4c38-bc25-3cb52af1216f" target="_blank"><strong><em><span>DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP</span></em></strong></a><strong><em><span>: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. 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