Par for the course: Trump leaves trail to promote his Scottish golf club.

(Photo: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

AYR, Scotland — His poll numbers are sinking. He’s struggling to hire and keep staff. And his campaign has shockingly little cash on hand compared with his presumptive Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, vexing Republicans already worried about his ability to survive a bruising general election campaign.

But Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is set to take a detour from the campaign trail Thursday to travel to Scotland, where he will cut the ribbon at the grand reopening of a century-old golf course he owns here along the lush seacoast of southwestern Scotland.

Trump is hardly the first presidential candidate to travel overseas in the midst of a heated campaign. But unlike Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, who headed abroad during their presidential efforts to emphasize their command of foreign affairs, the New York real estate mogul is not scheduled to meet with any world leaders or take any policy meetings. Trump will be here just to promote Trump, the business brand.

That’s not an unusual development for the reality television star turned political candidate, who has never been shy about promoting his business interests during his insurgent bid for the presidency.

In the midst of the tumultuous GOP primary, Trump famously used a press conference to talk up his line of Trump-branded products, including his wine, bottled water and even a platter of raw steaks he claimed were Trump Steaks, though that was later disputed by a local butcher who claimed to have provided the meat. And instead of public rallies, Trump held election night events that also served as a tour of his real estate portfolio, including press conferences at golf clubs in Florida and New York, Trump Tower in Manhattan and his opulent Mar-a-Lago beach club in Palm Beach, Fla.

When he makes his first official appearance of the trip to Scotland on Friday morning, the GOP candidate is again set to take his traveling press corps on something more like a public relations junket than an event featuring someone who could potentially be the next leader of the free world. In addition to a press conference, reporters are scheduled to observe Trump and his family arrive in their company’s Trump-branded helicopter and participate in photo opportunities around the newly reopened Trump Turnberry resort.

While Trump’s two-day visit to Scotland, where his mother emigrated from, will no doubt showcase his eccentricities as a candidate seemingly willing to break all the rules of what it means to run for president, it could also potentially highlight the dangers in how he has merged his corporate and political interests. He hopes his career as a successful businessman will sway voters in November, but the fallout from the divisive views he’s expressed as a candidate also threatens to undermine his business.

In the tiny hamlet of Turnberry, a seacoast town nestled in the rolling hills of lush agricultural country, Trump — who is known around here as simply “the Donald” — was praised as a job savior in this economically challenged region in 2014. That was the year he purchased the iconic 115-year-old golf course and its 110-year-old hotel, which had lost tens of millions of dollars a year under previous owners.

Locals still credit Trump for reportedly investing nearly $300 million into renovating the Turnberry resort, describing it as a much-needed boost to the community, which was hard hit by the global financial crisis in 2008. But it is grudging praise, tempered by their distaste for the controversial political views that Trump has unapologetically expressed as a candidate and their concern that those views could drive away tourists who might choose to boycott the newest Trump property in protest.

“He’s a bampot,” a local cabdriver, who declined to be publicly named trashing Trump, said, using a Scottish slang word for “idiot,” as he sat parked waiting for passengers outside the rail station closest to the Turnberry resort. But the driver said he wished Trump “good luck” because he and others tied to the golf and tourism industry “need that good luck too.”



By Holly Bailey.
Culled from Yahoo News.