Analysis by Kim Hjelmgaard

AVID MILNE flies the Mexican flag along with Scotland’s colours at his home in a former coast guard station with views overlooking Trump International Golf Links at Balmedie, Aberdeenshire.

It’s his way of sending a message to the man in the White House whose bond with golf is so deep that this week he warned Scottish independence would have disastrous implications for the sport.

“They’d no longer have the British Open,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

But long before the world received an inkling of what type of president that a billionaire New York real-estate mogul would make, Mr Milne and other residents of this small coastal community on a wild stretch of north-eastern Scotland bore witness to a Donald Trump who, they said, makes grandiose claims and resorts to bullying and other unsavoury tactics to get his way.

“He says he will give you the earth and gives you a handful of dirt,” said Mr Milne, 53, a health-and-safety consultant for the oil and gas industry.

He and his wife are among the property owners who are entangled in a decade-long David v Goliath battle with Mr Trump over his attempt to transform more than 600 acres of rolling farmland and environmentally important sand dunes into a world-class golf course and resort.

Just last week, Scotland’s Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage expressed fresh concerns about how the development plans for a second 18-hole course could contravene rules on sewage pollution, groundwater and dune preservation.

Yet Mr Trump’s son, Eric, said during a visit to Scotland late last month the Trump Organisation was ready to start the next stage of the development, a move that those who live next to the course fear could force them to sell.

Supporters of the development argue it has become a vital lifeline for a region far too dependent on the oil industry and that the project elevated the area’s prestige by associating with the Trump brand.

Opponents say the course and its amenities are nothing like what was promised, do not appear to be popular with golfers and may be abandoned by Mr Trump if he fails to block a wind turbine farm that will sit three miles off the coast when it becomes operational early next year.

“Most of us, even those who aren’t too keen on wind farms, are thrilled this is happening because Mr Trump has said if it does go ahead, he won’t do any more developing,” said Sue Edwards, 62, an anti-Trump activist who regularly walks her dog on Trump’s land and a parallel strip of pristine beach – permitted under Scottish public-access laws.

Trump has called the project a “blight” on the landscape.

“He assumes he can do whatever he likes and people will just do as they are told,” said Mr Milne, whose house looks over the dunes and to the North Sea beyond. Trump partially blocked that view with a row of trees and sent Mr Milne a £2,666 bill for a fence his company built around Milne’s garden.

Just as Mexico said it won’t pay for a border wall that Mr Trump wants, Mr Milne said he won’t pay, either.

He tore up the bill. Hence, the Mexican flag.

Mr Milne said that in 2009, Mr Trump offered about £198,080 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land. Mr Trump threw in some jewellery, a golf club membership, use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Mr Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate.

In Scotland, where Mr Trump plays up his Scottish roots – his mother was born on Lewis and emigrated to the US in 1929 – he has encountered stiff resistance to the development plan here, although some local business leaders and residents support it.

“The course has become a key part of our tourism offer,” said James Bream, director of policy at Aberdeen’s Chamber of Commerce. “Mr Trump has created a new emphasis for visitors, including many Americans, to spend money in this part of the country on golf and activities associated with golf such as accommodations, bars and restaurants.”

Stewart Spence, the owner of a luxury hotel in Aberdeen who describes himself as a close Trump ally and confidante to his sons, Eric and Donald Jnr., agreed. “What Mr Trump has already given us we will have for generations, and it is unbelievable,” he said. “Never in our wildest dreams did we expect it. It’s absolutely world class.”

Mr Spence said Mr Trump gave him honorary life membership to the club. “My certificate says 001. The night Donald presented me with it he said, ‘I have only given out one other and it’s 007, to Sean Connery,’” the James Bond actor, he explained.

Vic Henderson, 88, who used to work as a farm hand and engineer on Mr Trump’s land when it was under different ownership, said Mr Trump had done a “great thing.”

“He’s been tremendous. He’s brought the place alive,” he said.

Hanging on Mr Henderson’s wall in his small farmhouse is a letter Mr Trump wrote in 2007 thanking him for his “ongoing public support for our project”.

The enthusiasm Mr Spence, Mr Henderson and others have for the project doesn’t appear to match the reality of what’s on the ground.

According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Mr Trump promised to invest £1.1 billion in the project. He has spent £76 million. He vowed 6,000 jobs. There are 150. Two golf courses were promised. There’s one.

Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of time-share apartments that Mr Trump pledged to build, there is a 16-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump whisky, leather hip flasks and various golf paraphernalia.

Mr Spence , the hotelier who said he has a close relationship with the Trumps, said he has persuaded Eric and Donald Jnr. “not to spend another penny” in Aberdeen because the area is in a significant economic downturn linked to the slumping oil business.

“The Government’s advocacy for this project was based on the idea of a trickle-down benefit of being associated with a world-class celebrity. That has now been completely inverted because Mr Trump is a complete embarrassment,” said Martin Ford, a councillor who chaired a 2006 planning committee that voted to reject Mr Trump’s development.

“We’ve had a taste of Mr Trump for 11 years. I wouldn’t trust him with anything,” said Sheila Forbes, 70, who lives on land that borders Trump’s.

Mr Milne, who has a new Mexican flag on order after the last one ripped, said, “When someone comes along and tries to kick you out, I’m afraid the heels dig in.”

Kim Hjelmgaard is the Europe-based deputy world editor of USA Today