Latest news with #MichaelForbes
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Posts claim 92-year-old Scottish woman refused to sell her property to Donald Trump. Here's the truth
Claim: Posts on social media accurately reported the story of Molly Forbes, who at age 92 refused to sell her farmhouse in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to now-U.S. President Donald Trump so he could build a golf course. Rating: What's True: In 2006, Donald Trump purchased the Menie Estate north of Aberdeen, Scotland. His plans to develop the area involved buying the land of nearby residents, including Molly Forbes and her son Michael Forbes. The Forbeses and others refused to sell their property and fought the Trump Organization in several legal disputes. In 2010, Trump's workers cut off water to the Forbeses' property by fracturing a pipe leading to their house, and avoided fully repairing it. In 2016, after living without a reliable source of water for six years, Michael Forbes repaired the pipe, which was located on Trump's property. Molly Forbes died in 2021 at age 96. What's False: The Forbeses' story is well documented in the British press through a pair of documentaries directed by journalist Anthony Baxter, but those documentaries do not contain footage showing the Trump organization placing 24/7 floodlights around the house or cutting power to the Forbeses' property. In addition, Molly Forbes' obituary in the BBC notes that Michael Forbes, not Molly Forbes, owned the property. What's Undetermined: It's unclear just how loud and frequent the surrounding construction work was — the documentaries contain a lot of construction footage, but it's not clear whether the machinery was truly working "through the day and night and weekends." In 2006, much to the chagrin of some nearby residents, business mogul and future U.S. President Donald Trump bought the Menie Estate a few miles north of Aberdeen, Scotland. Trump planned to develop the estate, part of which sits on sand dunes overlooking the North Sea, by building two golf courses, a hotel and other luxury amenities. In 2025, posts appeared on Facebook pages around the same time that Trump returned to his Aberdeenshire resort to open the second of those two golf courses. The posts supposedly tell the story of Molly Forbes, a "little frail 92-year-old Scottish widow" who refused to sell her neighboring farmhouse to Trump, who purportedly retaliated by ordering "loud machinery to work through the day and night and weekends," shining floodlights onto her property at all hours of the day and cutting both power and water to the Forbes residence. But despite the retaliatory measures, according to the posts, Forbes never sold, "right up to her death four years later, aged 96." Snopes found that the story was a mixture of true and false information. The British press widely reported the events, and journalist Anthony Baxter created multiple documentaries detailing the situation. However, while the posts were based on real events, there was no evidence supporting some of their claims. When Trump bought the estate in 2006, his plans involved buying out some of the neighboring residents, including Michael Forbes. (Forbes' mother, Molly Forbes, lived on his property). But the Forbeses and several other neighbors refused to sell. Among other things, they were concerned that the golf course would damage the ecosystem of the sand dunes, which are deemed a Site of Special Scientific Interest by the Scottish government. An Aberdeenshire council committee initially denied Trump's golf course plan, but the Scottish government intervened and approved it in 2008 on the grounds that the economic benefits outweighed the environmental harm. Trump's team then intensified its attempts to get neighbors to sell. Trump reportedly asked the Aberdeenshire Council to consider a "compulsory purchase" of the land, which allows some entities to buy land without the owner agreeing to sell, as long as the purchase is considered within the public interest. According to the BBC, Molly Forbes brought legal action against Trump to stop such a purchase, which led the future president to call the property "slumlike" and "a pigsty." (The Guardian reported that, in the end, no compulsory purchase orders were ever issued). In 2010, Michael and Molly Forbes' water was shut off after workers building a road on the golf course broke a pipe. Baxter, who was working on his first film about the situation, went to the golf course and informed a groundskeeper, who admitted the workers had broken a pipe. Later that day, Baxter and his producer were arrested on charges of "breach of peace." (The footage caused an outcry and the charges were dropped.) However, the Forbeses' water problems continued because the broken pipe was on Trump's land and the resort never completely repaired it. According to The Guardian, Molly Forbes was without a reliable source of water for more than five years, during which time she relied on buckets from a nearby well and bottled water. In 2016, Michael Forbes repaired the pipe himself. The first of the two golf course opened in 2012, and the second is scheduled to open in August 2025, according to The New York Times. The Scottish government delisted the dunes as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 2020 because of the construction. Michael Forbes has no intention to sell his farmhouse, and Molly Forbes died at the age of 96 in 2021. In sum, the story about Molly Forbes is true, albeit exaggerated. Molly Forbes did not own the farmhouse — that was her son — but the Forbeses did refuse to sell the property to Trump. In 2010, workers did break the Forbeses' water pipe, which remained broken for more than five years. However, the other aspects of the stories were not true. Snopes reviewed both of Baxter's documentaries on the topic, "You've Been Trumped" and "You've Been Trumped Too." Neither contained footage showing 24/7 floodlights or neighbors having their power cut. (The earliest reference to floodlights Snopes could find was from a 2016 article in The Telegraph.) Finally, it's not clear how intrusive the construction schedule was. The documentaries do show significant construction work (in fact, one scene shows Trump's workers constructing earthen mounds to block the view of nearby houses from the golf course). However, whether that construction ran "through the day and night and weekends" as claimed by the social media posts is unknown. Baxter, Anthony. "Donald Trump Has Battled to Block My Film's Release for Years. Now He Has Failed." The Guardian, 16 Jul. 2020. The Guardian, ---. "Molly Forbes Obituary." The Guardian, 5 May 2021. The Guardian, BBC. "Trump Golf Course Dunes Lose Special Environmental Status." BBC, 9 Dec. 2020, BBC Audio | Trumped | Episode 8 - Epilogue. Accessed 31 Jul. 2025. Carrell, Severin, and Scotland correspondent. "Donald Trump Issues Abusive Statement against Golf Course Opponent." The Guardian, 24 Nov. 2009. The Guardian, ---. "Donald Trump's Golf Resort Plans Hit the Rough after Mass Purchase of Land." The Guardian, 26 May 2010. The Guardian, ---. "Film-Maker Investigating Donald Trump Resort Wins Apology for Arrest." The Guardian, 13 Dec. 2011. The Guardian, ---. "Film-Makers Arrested on Site of Donald Trump's Scottish Golf Resort." The Guardian, 12 Sep. 2010. The Guardian, Compulsory Purchase Orders: Introduction. 21 Jul. 2025, Donald Trump: Molly Forbes Who Stood up to Golf Plans Dies at 96. 22 Apr. 2021. Esposito, Joey. "Trump's Scottish Golf Course Didn't Increase Security Due to Men Defecating in Holes." Snopes, 14 May 2025, Horton, Helena. "The 92-Year-Old Scottish Widow Taking on Donald Trump." The Telegraph, 27 Oct. 2016, Scotland Was "hoodwinked" by Donald Trump, Says Former Aide. 29 Mar. 2024. "Trump Wins Approval for Controversial $2.4b Golf Course Plans." The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Nov. 2008, Yamamoto, Jen. "Meet a 92-Year-Old Woman Whose Life Was Ruined by Donald Trump." The Daily Beast, 26 Oct. 2016,
Yahoo
28-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years. Kim Hjelmgaard is an international correspondent for USA TODAY. Follow him on Bluesky, Instagram and LinkedIn. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
Belfast Telegraph
26-07-2025
- Sport
- Belfast Telegraph
I will be smash hit with the Hammers: NI ace Forbes
Teenage star hungry for Premier League bow after making West Ham debut Northern Ireland Under-19 captain Michael Forbes says he's confident he can thrive on the Premier League stage with West Ham. The 18-year-old made his first team debut as a substitute in a friendly against Cambridge last week and a first appearance in England's top flight is edging closer for the talented centre-back.
BBC News
25-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Northampton sign West Ham defender Forbes on loan
Northampton Town have signed West Ham central defender Michael Forbes on a season-long loan 21-year-old can also operate as a left-back and has one cap for Northern was part of a Hammers' under-21s side who drew 0-0 with the Cobblers in a friendly on move reunites Forbes with Northampton manager Kevin Nolan after the pair worked together at West Ham."He was a youth team player when I was there. I know what he is capable of and the levels he is capable of reaching," Nolan, who spent four years playing for the east London club and another four on the coaching staff, said., external Forbes joined League Two side Bristol Rovers on season-long loan at the start of the 2024-25 season but was recalled by the Hammers after sustaining a hamstring then joined Colchester United on a loan deal but had a reoccurence of that injury, so again returned to his parent club."He had some really bad luck last season but he is back now and we feel we can provide the platform for Michael to develop and kick on," Nolan said."We believe we can help him reach the levels we know he is capable of and that includes playing international football again."Northampton begin their League One campaign on Saturday, 2 August with a trip to Wigan Athletic (15:00 BST).
New York Times
23-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
A New Golf Course and Old Grudges Await Trump in Scotland
Michael Forbes has been at odds with President Trump since the day Mr. Trump turned up with a plan to build a golf resort next to his farm on Scotland's northeast coast. That was nearly 20 years ago, and Mr. Forbes, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, hasn't lost any of his vinegar. 'There's no way I'm ever going to sell,' Mr. Forbes, 73, said this week of his property, which is surrounded by a new golf course that Mr. Trump is expected to dedicate when he visits his two resorts in Scotland this week. 'I keep three Highland cows behind the house,' Mr. Forbes said, chuckling that the bucolic spectacle annoys his neighbor, clashing with his manicured landscape. Such cussedness comes naturally on this wild stretch of the Scottish coast, where the North Sea winds can snap a full-grown spruce tree in two. But it captures a wider refusal among many Scots to make peace with Mr. Trump, even after he regained the White House and deepened his investment in Scotland — a token of his ties to the land where his mother was born. 'Everyone in Scotland hates him,' Mr. Forbes said, a claim that was thrown in doubt a few minutes later by John Duncan, a nearby contractor who clears ditches for Mr. Trump. 'I love the man,' Mr. Duncan said, noting that the president's resort, Trump International Scotland, employs 35 greenskeepers alone. 50 miles North Sea Trump International Scotland Balmedie Aberdeenshire SCOTLAND Atlantic Ocean Glasgow Trump Turnberry northern ireland ENGLAND By The New York Times Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
