The sun is pressing through the low grey clouds above Turnberry beach in Ayrshire where Alan Ringrose is walking his dog. He shakes his head at the emerging news from across the Atlantic.
“I think America’s gone mad,” he says. “How can you elect a criminal as president?”
Disbelief is his overriding emotion as the reality of a second Trump presidency sinks in. “I don’t get it. Perhaps people were afraid to elect a black woman?”
Ringrose, who cares for the local bowling green in his retirement, gestures across the dunes to the terraced lawns of the five-star Trump Turnberry hotel. It is one of two luxury golfing resorts owned by the president-elect in Scotland; the other is in Aberdeenshire. “He has done a lot for the area, but as a politician …” Ringrose trails off.
Further down the windswept beach, Elizabeth Cogan is taking her jack russell Molly for a stroll. She is also quick to acknowledge the investment Trump has made in the local economy. But as a world leader? “It’s a total disaster: he’s a fascist, he’s against women, he’s homophobic, he’s racist. It is a shock because I thought people would have come to their senses and realised what kind of man he is.
“It’s difficult with politics, because you have to respect different opinions. But look how he divides people, the way he treats immigrants.”
Of particular concern to Cogan are the billionaires with whom Trump surrounds himself, many of whom wield powerful influence, like Elon Musk. “Someone with such wealth has no understanding of how normal people live,” says Cogan.
His victory will resonate far beyond the US, she adds, citing Ukraine, Gaza and the climate as immediate areas of concern.
Cogan remembers the comedian Janey Godley, who died last Saturday, protesting on this very beach with her succinct, handwritten sign reading “Trump is a cunt”, which brought her worldwide viral fame, as well as vitriol. “She was an ordinary working person who understood,” says Cogan.
Trump, whose mother, Mary Anne Macleod, was born on the Isle of Lewis before emigrating to New York at the age of 18, has had a vexed relationship with Scotland’s leaders: he clashed with Alex Salmond over his resort expansion plans in Aberdeen and described Nicola Sturgeon as a “failed woke extremist”, while he called the first minster John Swinney’s backing of Kamala Harris last week “an insult” to his investment in Scotland by his business Trump International.
Swinney formally congratulated Trump on Wednesday but raised concerns about the potential impact of the proposed import tariffs on the Scotch whisky industry.
Dave McDade was a member of the Turnberry golf course until 2016, when illness stopped him playing regularly. “It’s so expensive now, [Trump] he’s put it out of reach of normal people. I heard a round of golf costs £500.”
Indeed, next year the cost of a tee time for the Ailsa course, widely ranked as one of the best golf courses in the world and former host to the Open Championship, will increase to £545, with greens fees rising to £1,000 at peak times.
Around lunchtime the course is almost deserted, with only a handful of cars in the clubhouse car park which is surrounded by cabbage palms with an ornate central fountain that matches the one in the hotel’s courtyard.
“I’m surprised that people voted for him after all the stuff he’s come out with,” adds McDade, who now plays at the more affordable course in Stranraer.
Others prefer to keep their counsel on the man who, as one points out, “pays a lot of local wages”. Another woman, with relatives in the United States, says she has seen how Biden’s economic failures have affected them directly and is glad that Trump has won.
Given the largely gloomy tenor of the local response, another offers a glimmer of hope: “The only good thing is that he can’t run again, so we just have to get through the next four years.”
• This article was amended on 7 November 2024 to correct an attribution of a quote which an earlier version said had been from Janey Godley when it should have been from Elizabeth Cogan.
