A DISTANT cousin of Donald Trump has described the US president as a selfish man who has never given a penny back to his mother’s native Hebridean community – and who once “stole” pancakes from his kitchen.
The US president has only once visited his late mother’s former home of Tong on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, spending less than two minutes in the croft house. Mary Anne MacLeod Trump was raised alongside nine siblings in the house before she emigrated to the US.
Despite a much of his family still living in Lewis, Alice Mackay – who is related to Donald Trump’s maternal family, the MacLeods – said the president doesn’t have the same generosity as his mother and older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, 82. Both maintained close links with the area and made sizeable donations to Lewis.
Mackay, 79, said: “I don’t like the man at all, he’s so unlike his mother and father. He had lovely parents, I don’t know what went wrong with him. My mum and dad were second cousins. Every time they were over here they came to ours for dinner.
“He [Donald Trump] was here one morning I was busy making pancakes and he had forgotten my husband had died. He put a few pancakes in pocket and never said ‘cheerio’ or anything.”
During his trip to Lewis 11 years ago, the president met a delegation from Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the Western Isles Council, to discuss plans to convert Lews Castle into a hotel and museum. He promised to “look at it” but the council never heard back from him.
Mackay, however, has fond memories of Trump’s mother, who died in 2000, and sister, a retired federal appellate judge.
Mary Anne emigrated in 1930 at the age of 17 to New York, where she met Donald’s father Fred. She donated funds for a village hall in the 1970s. And in 2015, Maryanne, who has visited Lewis dozens of times, gave £158,000 to the Bethesda care home and hospice in Stornoway.
Mackay continued: “They were a lovely pair. His sister gave a big donation to the hospice. Mary Anne gave money to the Tong centre as well. She was a lovely woman.”
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