COULD President Trump be a reader of The National?
We ask because the president has finally agreed with this newspaper’s definitive account of his mother’s immigration from Scotland to New York.
Our journalist Martin Hannan and photographer Deb Armstrong travelled to Lewis in May, 2016 and in contrast to the Trump family “official” and BBC versions, found documentary proof that Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, did not meet his father Fred on holiday in New York but was a poor immigrant.
READ MORE: The mysterious Mary Trump – The full untold story
The National showed that she arrived from Glasgow aboard the three-funnelled ship the Transylvania on May 11, 1930 – the day after her 18th birthday – with just $50, and immediately began work as a domestic servant.
The truth that his mother was poor immigrant coming to work as a domestic did not play well with Trump’s anti-immigrant stance in the election campaign, and contradicted the “holiday” story. Our story was followed up by many newspapers and the New Yorker magazine – maybe the president read it too.
Last weekend, before Trump headed to Helsinki to meet with Vladimir Putin, he spoke at his Turnberry golf club with CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor.
This is the conversation:
GLOR: “Your mother got on a ship in 1930.”
TRUMP: “That’s right.”
GLOR: “The Transylvania.”
TRUMP: “That’s right.”
GLOR: “From Glasgow.”
TRUMP: “Very young. Very young. And she met my father. She was 18, maybe 19, and she met my father. And they were married, very happily, for many decades. Very good marriage.”
GLOR: “So what is it about Scotland? What – what is it that brings you back here?”
READ MORE: Scottish Greens invoice White House for 'paid Trump protesters'
TRUMP: “Well, when your mother’s born in a certain place, and I had a great mother, a beautiful, wonderful mother a tremendous heart, and she loved Scotland. And so, you know, you feel differently than you perhaps would if that didn’t take place.”
True to his ambivalence with facts, Trump then proceeded to say that his father was from Germany. In fact Fred Trump was a New Yorker born and bred. It was Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trumpf who was from Germany though he used to claim he was Swedish in order to avoid upsetting Jews in New York.
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We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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