ON the day that he postponed his state visit to Denmark because the Danish prime minister wouldn’t discuss selling him Greenland, President Donald Trump found himself being seriously questioned over apparently differing official statements about his two Scottish golf courses.
Trump’s courses, the Trump International at Menie in Aberdeenshire and the Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, were reported to Companies House as having lost £4.6 million – equal to $6.3m at yesterday’s currency prices – in the last year for which accounts were filed.
Yet according to the Huffington Post website “his 2018 ‘public financial disclosure’ filed with the US Office of Government Ethics claims those two resorts earned him “income” of $23.8m.”
The losses claimed to Companies House are more consistent as Trump Turnberry’s parent company Golf Recreation Scotland posted a loss of almost £3.4m in 2017.
Huffington Post added: “Trump claimed in his 2018 US filing that his Turnberry and Aberdeen resorts were each worth more than $50m. For that same time period, he filed balance sheets with the United Kingdom Government showing that their combined debt exceeded their assets by £47.9m ― the equivalent of $64.8m at the exchange rate on Dec 31, 2017, the date of the last UK filing available.”
According to the Huffington Post this difference between the UK and US returns amounts to $165m. It also revealed almost $200m of loans by Trump to his Scottish courses.
The accuracy of Trump’s tax and other financial returns has been questioned many times in the past and he has refused to release all his tax returns despite promising to do so.
The issue is almost certainly going to impact on the 2020 presidential election because there is currently a case before the courts in the USA demanding that trump reveal six years of tax and business returns.
The state of California also recently passed a law saying that all candidates wishing to be on the primary election process in the state must reveal their tax returns. Trump has now lodged a court case against the law.
Meanwhile, Denmark has reacted angrily to the news that Trump has cancelled his state visit there because Prime Minister Mitte Frederiksen won’t sell him Greenland, the world’s largest island that is an autonomous state of Denmark.
Trump tweeted: “Based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of #Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting.”
Frederiksen said she was “surprised and disappointed” at the postponement just 12 days before the visit was due to start.
Other politicians went further. Morten Ostergaard, leader of the centre-left Radikale Venstre party, tweeted: “The reality is stranger than fiction. The man is unreliable.”
The National has asked Trump’s team for reaction. A representative of the Trump Organisation told the Huffington Post the apparent discrepancy in figures was due to different reporting rules.
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