Thursday 15 December 2016

Presidents of the United States

How many Presidents of the United States of America have Scottish ancestry? It is perhaps both more, yet fewer, than you think.
For example there is a list that states that an incredible 23 of 43 US Presidents have Scottish ancestry. But most of the bloodlines are pretty thin. Whilst a number have Scottish great-grandparents, or grandparents whose families had settled in Ulster from Scotland, only two US Presidents qualify for the honour of representing Scotland at international football through FIFA's grandfather rule. Those two Presidents are Woodrow Wilson - and Donald Trump.

The Donald does not even have to go back to his grandparents to pull on the dark blue jersey with the lion rampant. Trump's mother was from Tong in Lewis, which makes him the most Scottish person ever to lead the USA.
 
No need to thank us.

Trump's own relationship with Scotland has been mixed. All seemed great at first when he visited the maternal homeland with a business plan. First Jack McConnell, then Alex Salmond were swept off their feet by Trump's considerable dynamism, allowing the best golf course in the world to be built on the dunes of Balmedie, despite opposition from environmentalists and the people who were already living on the land. But Salmond fell foul of Trump when the toupéd Twitterer discovered plans for an offshore wind farm visible from Balmedie. And well before then, questions were asked about the government's keenness to please the American tycoon, whose unneighbourly behaviour was documented in You've Been Trumped.

Trump's second golf course in Scotland - Turnberry:


Then Nicola Sturgeon antagonised relations further, publicly castigating Trump's election stump comments about women, Muslims and Mexicans. She removed his Global Scot status. The President-Elect was undeterred, who by now had also bought the famous old golf course Royal Turnberry. (Renaming it Trump Turnberry.) When Trump visited the course in a blizzard of publicity on 24 June this year, he congratulated Scotland in voting for Brexit, despite the opposite being the case. 'Scottish Twitter' replied with ripely surreal insults.

When Barack Obama became president, the people of Kenya's pride was piqued that his father was one of them. By contrast the people of Mary Anne MacLeod, mother of the next President of the USA, have elected to brand her son a 'cheeto-faced shitgibbon'. But you know, insults like that aren't meted out to just anybody.

It's almost a tribute.

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