Donald Trump will touch down in Scotland later today as part of a flying visit which has sparked one of the largest police operations the country has ever seen.
Air Force One is expected at Prestwick Airport on Friday night, with the U.S President likely to visit his Turnberry golf course before heading up to Aberdeen to open a new course named for his Scottish mother, Mary MacLeod.
Though Trump has said he "feels Scottish", his relationship with the country has had its ups and downs.
Here are the highs and the lows.
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Trump's Scottish connection
The President is connected to Scotland by blood, his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was from Tong, on the Isle of Lewis.
Born in the village in 1912 to Mary Ann and Malcolm, a crofter and fisherman, hers was a tough upbringing, the Hebrides at the time being described in the work of historian James Hunter as "where I always considered human wretchedness to have reached its very acme" and by the President as "serious Scotland".
She grew up speaking Gaelic, only learning English when she went to school, but Tong didn't have much to offer a young woman.
Mary became one of the roughly half a million Scots who emigrated between 1919 and 1938, with over three-quarters of those heading to North America.
The day before her 18th birthday, May 11 1930, she arrived in New York City under immigrant visa 2669191.
As she arrived on the RMS Transylvania, Mary would have passed the Statue of Liberty on her way to the immigration centre on Ellis Island. Records show she had never visited the U.S before and was carrying the sum total of $50.
Inscribed on the statue, the first thing new immigrants from Europe would see, is a poem which concludes: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
Those lofty sentiments clearly haven't rubbed off on the President who declared in October last year: "We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a garbage can for the world. Every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country I get angry and angrier."
A few years later Mary met property developer Fred Trump and the rest is history.
Donald, who was born in 1946, may have been named after her maternal grandfather, who died at sea aged 34 but he's visited Lewis just twice in his life, once as a toddler and once for around 90 minutes on the way to one of his golf courses.
Highs
![Donald Trump with The Wee Red Book at Turnberry]()
Donald Trump with The Wee Red Book at Turnberry (Image: Colin Templeton)
While most of Trump's dealings with Scotland and in particular the Scottish Government have been adversarial, there have been some moments of harmony along the way.
When the future President first purchased the land which would become Trump International Aberdeen, he was welcomed with open arms by First Minister Jack McConnell.
The Scottish Labour leader invited Trump to become a 'Globalscot', a network of overseas Scots and friends of Scotland who served as business ambassadors.
McConnell said: "Donald has shown me a real passion for Scotland. He is a globally recognised figure who can help us to promote Scotland. I am delighted that he has taken up my offer. This is a good bit of business for all concerned."
Indeed, the First Minister wanted to go further by making him a 'platinum member' of the Globalscot club, a unique status which would have been reserved only for The Donald.
Such was the love-in, Green MSP Patrick Harvie quipped: "It's beginning to look embarrassing that the leader of the government is behaving like a teenager with a crush."
Things continued in much the same vein with McConnell's successor, Alex Salmond - at least initially.
In 2007 Aberdeenshire Council rejected planning permission for Trump's golf course and, rather than submitting a new application, the Apprentice host announced he would look elsewhere.
In an unprecedented move, the Scottish Government called in the proposal, saying it "raises issues of importance that require consideration at a national level". Trump had met with Salmond the day before.
Holyrood eventually approved the proposal, with Trump saying: "I hardly know [[Alex Salmond]], but what I know is that he's an amazing man.
"Alex Salmond and I have virtually never even talked about this job but I know for a fact that he - and anyone else who's representing Scotland, unless they're the enemy - wants billions of pounds to come into Aberdeenshire and Scotland."
It was on the way to a public hearing about that golf course in Balmedie that Trump visited his mother's croft on Lewis - for a grand total of 97 seconds - and declared "I do feel Scottish".
In 2010, Trump was given an honorary degree by Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen raising a chuckle when he was introduced as "the highest-paid speaker in the world" and replied "not today".
Speaking of his mother he said: "She was very thrifty. The Scots have this reputation for watching the dollars, so she really had a natural business instinct.
"She loved everything that this great place stood for and she'd be very proud today."
Lows
The process of building that first golf course in Aberdeenshire was long and controversial with one local farmer, Michael Forbes, refusing to sell his land to the billionaire.
An exasperated Trump ultimately offered £450,000 and a £50k per year job for the small farm.
The response? "He can take his money and shove it up his arse."
Trump did, of course, finally get his course built but was soon on a collision course with the Scottish Government over one of his pet peeves - wind turbines.
As well as objecting to them aesthetically, the President appears to genuinely believe that the noise made by the rotating blades causes cancer.
When permission was granted for a wind farm off the coast of Aberdeenshire - in full view of his new course - the future leader of the free world was apoplectic.
He wrote a furious letter to Salmond asking: "Do you want to be known for centuries to come as 'Mad Alex - the man who destroyed Scotland'?"
So incensed was The Donald he appeared before the Scottish Parliament to give evidence, drawing laughs from the public gallery when asked for his evidence of the negative impact of turbines and responding: "I am the evidence."
"He came, he saw, he blustered," said CBS News.
Trump threatened to withdraw all investment in Scotland if the plans went ahead, but ultimately decided to expand his portfolio with the acquisition of the Turnberry course in South Ayrshire.
He abandoned the Republican primary in 2016 to open the course, where he famously predicted that the UK would vote for Brexit, stunning the political pundit class with his foresight.
As he told The Sun: "I predicted Brexit. I was cutting a ribbon for the opening of Turnberry - you know they did a whole renovation, it is beautiful - the day before the Brexit vote.
“I said, ‘Brexit will happen’. The vote is going to be positive because people don’t want to be faced with the horrible immigration problems that they are being faced with in other countries. I said Brexit will happen, and I was right.”
The only slight flaw in this story is that Trump arrived in Ayrshire the day after the vote when the result had already been announced.
He did not meet with Salmond's successor, Nicola Sturgeon, on that visit with the First Minister later telling ITV: "I expect the people of the United States will have the good sense not to elect him."
The two may not share much in common, but it appears prognostication skill is one of them.
Sturgeon was forced into something of a climbdown with what the White House described as "a short congratulatory call" and a letter, though the First Minister made clear she would "not maintain a diplomatic silence" in the face of "abhorrent comments".
When Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020, she offered a "cheerio" and "don't haste ye back", with the businessman commenting on the former First Minister's own travails on a trip to Turnberry in 2023 as he said "she has not been a great person for Scotland".
John Swinney then caused a stooshie of his own when he urged American voters to back Kamala Harris in November's election, only for Trump to win in a landslide.
Son Eric Trump said: "My father adores Scotland, and you have a First Minister coming out and just being fairly nasty in the days leading up.
“I mean, who did that benefit? Did that benefit Scotland?"
The First Minister is expected to meet with Trump on his short visit to Scotland - things may be a little frosty.
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