What happened when Donald Trump visited the Scottish Parliament
It was April 2012, and the US businessman was met outside Holyrood by crowds of booing environmentalists and placard-wielding anti-wind farm activists chanting: 'There's only one Donald Trump'.
He smirked and waved before making his way inside to present evidence as part of a committee looking at the impact of renewable technology.
Why? He was appearing to give evidence as a business owner in Scotland and arguing against further wind turbines. At that time, he owned just one golf course in Aberdeenshire but would soon add Turnberry in South Ayrshire a few years later.
The billionaire was invited by the committee convener Murdo Fraser, explains Patrick Harvie – now Scottish Greens co-leader and then a member of the committee.
(Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Archive/PA Images)
'Murdo Fraser was a little bit more sceptical about the Scottish Government's renewable energy targets. I obviously believed that they were not only achievable, but that we could do even more than those targets, and indeed that's what we did do,' he told The National.
'And at that time, Donald Trump was busily campaigning against renewables because he didn't want his wealthy guests at his golf resort to have to see the terrifying spectacle of a turbine on the horizon when they were teeing off.'
Harvie added: 'I think it's probably fair to say that Murdo slightly bounced the committee into calling him as a witness. The idea that he was an expert witness on renewable energy is laughable. But, as far as I recall, Murdo met with Trump's team, and after the meeting, they announced that they were going to be giving evidence to the committee, without the committee having agreed to call him as a witness.'
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He went on: 'And once that was in the papers, most of the committee felt that they couldn't then say no without looking embarrassed. You know, I thought that was absurd. Trump is someone who has long pedalled unhinged conspiracy theories. He once wrote that climate change was invented by China to steal American jobs.
'It became the absurd circus that I was worried it would be.'
And, of course, it did. With Tory MSP Fraser himself admitting in the aftermath that in terms of actual evidence, there 'wasn't much substance.'
In a particular noteworthy moment, the now US president was claiming that the Scottish public hated wind farms.
This led to SNP MSP Chic Brodie asking him what evidence he had to support this.
The billionaire then pointed at himself and said 'I am the evidence'.
After the mammoth two-hour long session, Harvie tweeted an image from the famous Monty Python's Life of Brian crucifixion scene and superimposed a speech bubble in front of each character that read "I am the evidence'.
This didn't go down well with Trump.
'He got, I think at the time, one of Scotland's highest paid lawyers as his legal representative,' Harvie explained.
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'And a little while later I got a letter informing me that I was being accused of blasphemy. That I offended the whole of Christendom, who I'm fairly certain were not all following me on Twitter.'
The complaint was also sent to the Holyrood standards commissioner who was then forced to launch an investigation due to parliament rules and an obscure Scottish blasphemy law that was last enforced in 1843.
It was, of course, thrown out as frivolous eventually.
'After many run-ins with religious hierarchy figures over equal marriage or sex education or umpteen other issues, I am now to this date the only MSP ever found formally not guilty of blasphemy,' Harvie said.
'So, I'm delighted with that.'
Of course, Trump is now a two-term US president. How times have changed. But Harvie said people shouldn't forget what he has done and said in the past.
'At the time, there were people who still regarded him just as a media celebrity. They'd seen him on The Apprentice. They saw him as this kind of celebrity clown figure,' he explained.
'[But] I think it's really important to acknowledge that well before then. In fact, decades before then – he was a notorious racist, sexist, homophobe, climate denier, and procurer of other conspiracy theories.'
Harvie added: 'He's a dangerous, dangerous man and always was.'
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