THIS week, the Scottish independence movement got its best news for months. It was so good that even Reporting Scotland was forced to give it the very briefest of mentions, though still without mentioning the best bits. We discovered that Donald Trump hates the idea of Scottish independence. He hates it almost as much as he hates CNN. That’s bigly bad. Huge. He hates it so much that he’ll use bad three times in a single sentence, and that’s the official exchange rate for terrible. There’s three bads to the terrible, and four terribles to whatever it is that Anthony Scaramucci is calling Donald’s new chief of staff after getting fired.
Trump’s remarks on independence were revealed in the transcript of an interview with the Wall Street Journal which the paper didn’t publish because the interview was an exercise in chummy sycophancy which made Nicolas Witchell’s witterings on Prince Philip’s last public engagement seem like a pack of pitbulls savaging Bambi’s mammy. Despite the paper hoping that the interview’s contents could be kept as secret as Donald Trump’s tax returns, the full toe-curling transcript was leaked to a politics website.
Amongst other notable highlights, Donald asserted that the speech he’d given to the American Boy Scout Jamboree was the best speech the Scouts had ever received, and that the head of the organisation had called him afterwards to say so. This was after the American Scouts had issued an official apology for the controversial and political nature of Trump’s speech at what was meant to be an apolitical event. Managing to enrage the Scouts takes a special kind of political tone-deafness.
Apropos of nothing in particular, Trump asked his interviewer, Gerald Baker, about whether Scotland was going to have another independence referendum. It’s unclear why he thought that the American reporter would be an expert on Scottish politics. Gerald had hitherto been far more interested in exchanging pleasantries with Ivanka about who they’d met while at a party for rich people in Southampton. That’s a very posh bit of Long Island, and not the town in the south of England. Southampton England is nowhere near as posh, even if it does have a kebab shop with a soap dispenser in the toilet. Trump wouldn’t be seen dead in a kebab shop in the other Southampton. Besides, it might be full of Muslims.
Trump was incredulous that Scotland might want another independence referendum. Apparently we’ve just been through hell. Had you noticed? No, neither had I. Donald didn’t specify the nature of the hell, so we’re left to speculate. Since the President’s views are formed by whatever it was he last saw on Fox News or heard from some conspiracy theorist, the chances are that the hell he was referring to was a spate of alien abductions in Bonnybridge that he learned all about in the latest episode of Nazi Alien Bigfoot Ghost Hunters on the History Channel. Although to be fair, it has approximately the same grounding in reality as the Scottish Conservatives. Bigly divisive!
The main objection that the US President has to Scottish independence is that he’s unsure what would happen to the British Open. That’s the Open Golf championship which is administered by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. Despite the fact that the competition is run and managed by a golf club which is in Scotland, Donald Trump is worried about whether the Open can continue to be held in Scotland, or more exactly, his golf courses in Scotland, after Scottish independence. That’s the kind of firm grasp on the details that we’ve come to expect from a fan of Brexit. Of course the chances are that Donald’s courses might not host the Open after independence, but that will only be because the Scottish Government has allowed Mexico to build a wall around them.
However since most of Scotland hated the Donald long before it was fashionable, the revelation that another big orange man has come out firmly in support of the Union can only boost the chances of independence, in order to annoy Trump, if for no other reason. Hence the grudging mentions of the story in yer usual Unionesque outlets, which glossed over the news as quickly as possible. It got all of ten seconds on the BBC news where we are, and none at all on the national news.
Compare and contrast with when the last US President made a far less equivocal statement in opposition to Scottish independence. When Obama hinted that he’d prefer it if the United Kingdom remained united, it dominated the headlines for days, was the lead story on the BBC, and was analysed and discussed in depth.
Meanwhile Trump’s outright condemnation of Scottish independence is glossed over like a report from a pro-independence think tank that maybe Scotland isn’t so poor and helpless after all. Good news for Scottish independence is never as newsworthy as bad news for Scottish independence. Funny that.
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