Trump in Scotland
From the NY Times today...
Donald Trump, in Scotland, Calls ‘Brexit’ Result ‘a Great Thing’
AYRSHIRE, Scotland - Donald J. Trump arrived in Scotland just as Britain was deciding to leave the European Union, and proclaimed the momentous departure “a great thing” and the subsequent decline of the British pound good for local companies - including his own Turnberry golf course.
Touching down in Scotland on Friday morning to visit his luxury resort and golf course, Mr. Trump, who in the run-up to the “Brexit” vote had suggested that Britain leave the European Union, took a victory lap of sorts, landing in his “G-TRMP” helicopter and proclaiming, “I said this was going to happen, and I think that it’s a great thing.”
“Basically they took back their country,” Mr. Trump said.
“Look, if the pound goes down, they’re going to do more business,” Mr. Trump said, when asked during a news conference about the referendum’s market ramifications. “When the down pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly.”
Mr. Trump also said he saw “a big parallel” between the vote in Britain and the broader populist, anti-establishment sentiment that helped fuel his rise to become the Republican presidential nominee in the United States.
“People want to take their country back, they want to have independence in a sense, and you see it with Europe, all over Europe, and you’re going to have more than just, in my opinion, more than just what happened last night,” Mr. Trump said. You’re going to have many other cases where people want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back, they want to be able to have a country again.”
His message in favor of “Brexit,” however, was not necessarily welcome here in Scotland, whose citizens had overwhelmingly voted to remain part of Europe, and were already discussing the possibility of breaking from England as a result of Thursday’s vote.
Early in June, Mr. Trump did not even know what Brexit referred to, and as recently as Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that his opinion on the referendum was insignificant because he had not been following the issue closely.
But hours after Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain announced he was going to resign as a result of the vote, Mr. Trump offered his own political analysis, saying frustration with the status quo had helped influence the result.
“People are angry, all over the world people, they’re angry,” he said. “They’re angry over borders, they’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over, nobody even knows who they are. They’re angry about many, many things.”
Mr. Trump added that he expected the anger to spread.
“There’s plenty of other places,” he said. “This will not be the last.”
(snipped the rest)