LONDON – President Trump has not said where he plans to go after leaving the White House on January 20. But the leader of Scotland made it clear on Tuesday that Mr. Trump is not welcome in her country.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Prime Minister of Scotland, has said that the President’s visit to one of his Scottish golf courses, Trump Turnberry, is not just acceptable.
Rumor has it that Mr. Tump was to leave for Scotland, flared up after a Scottish newspaper reported that a US military version of a Boeing 757 – sometimes used by Mr. Trump was used – would land at a nearby airport on Jan. 19, the day before Joseph R Biden Jr. must be sworn in as president.
“We do not allow people to come to Scotland,” she said. Sturgeon told reporters in Edinburgh, ‘and that would apply to him, just as it would apply to anyone else – and to come play golf is not what I would consider essential purpose. ”
A judicial politician, Ms. Sturgeon, said she did not know what Mr. Trump’s travel plans were not, however, that she hoped his immediate plan was to leave the White House. On Monday, it closed Scotland, which, like England, has an increase in cases of coronavirus due to a rapidly spreading new variant.
Under the new rules, people must stay at home and work from there, where possible. Places of worship are closed and schools will teach at a distance. Scotland has regularly moved faster and further than England to impose restrictions during the pandemic.
The White House initially declined to comment on the report, which was first published in the Sunday Post article in Scotland, but later denied it.
“This is not accurate,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday. “President Trump does not plan to travel to Scotland.”
Two White House officials said that although there was almost no concrete discussion about what Mr. Trump is not going to do that on January 20 because he is so focused on blocking the election results, they do not believe he is considering Scotland.
Mr. Trump has owned the Trump Turnberry resort since 2014 and has long considered it an escape. According to Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, he planned to fly to the resort in November 2016 if, as he expected at the time, he lost the presidential game against Hillary Clinton. In July 2018, Mr. Trump played golf there for two days during a visit to Britain, before flying to Helsinki, Finland, to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Turnberry is perhaps the most prestigious golf course in mr. Trump’s portfolio. But Mr. Trump is very unpopular in Britain, and even after a $ 150 million renovation, the course has lost money throughout, and the president is determined to drive business there.
Last summer, Turnberry came under scrutiny after US Ambassador to Britain Robert Wood Johnson IV told colleagues that Trump had asked him to see if the British government could send the British Open golf tournament to its links.
Mr. Johnson, a good friend of Mr. Trump raised the issue with then-Foreign Secretary for Scotland David Mundell, according to Lewis A. Lukens, a former deputy head of the mission at the embassy in London, who served as acting ambassador to Mr. Trump. Johnson’s arrival.
Turnberry also drew attention when the Pentagon admitted that it had sent troops to the resort while they were overnight at the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport, the same airport where the Scottish news media, citing an airport source, had plans for the arrival of the government 757 on 19 January.
Mr. Trump has not yet given the election to Mr. Biden did not concede and said little about what he planned to do after leaving the White House. He leaves his Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago estate, to return to the White House on New Year’s Eve and skip the traditional party in the estate’s ballroom.
These days, it seems like Mr. Trump is blocking the outcome of the election. He made few comments on the pandemic and focused almost entirely on unfounded allegations of widespread voices.
In Scotland, however, Trump would find a country consumed by his fight against the virus. The decision of me. Sturgeon to impose a closure on Monday has a decision by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put the whole of England in a similar exclusion. Under the limited self-government in the United Kingdom, the Scottish authorities are responsible for public health.
Unlike mr. Johnson, who Mr. Cultivated Trump as a like-minded populist, Ms. Sturgeon, who is the leader of the Scottish National Party, has never shared much of her view on Mr. Trump made no secret.
On Friday after the election, when Mr. Biden was on her way to victory, she said on Twitter: “Sometimes the world can be just a dark place – but today we see a bit of a break in the clouds.”
Mark Landler reports from London and Maggie Haberman from New York.