JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Before departing Scotland this afternoon, President Trump opened a new golf course he owns there, which he named after his Scottish-born mother. NPR's Lauren Frayer visited the site on Scotland's North Sea coast and spoke to some of Trump's new neighbors.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: I'm hiking up these sand dunes on the northeast Scottish coast. It's wet. It's windy. But it is extraordinary. White-sand beaches stretch as far north as I can see. But about a quarter of a mile north of here is as far as I'm able to walk because what locals tell me used to be a public right of way is now blocked by President Trump's golf course.
CHRIS CANE: Rich Americans - sorry, you're not greatly loved.
FRAYER: I'm not rich, so (laughter)...
CANE: No (laughter). No.
FRAYER: I duck out of the rain and meet retiree Chris Cane at The Sand Bothy, a wooden shelter behind the dunes, which when I visited was hosting a fundraiser...
UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing) Going loco down in Acapulco.
FRAYER: ...Complete with a choir doing jazz hands, raising money for wheelchair access to the beach.
UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing) Loco down in Acapulco.
FRAYER: But the biggest topic of conversation here is that police are swarming these dunes amid a visit by the VIP neighbor, Trump.
JENNY TURNER: You know, I mean, he's a disaster domestically. Everybody hates him.
DAVE TAYLOR: The golf course seems very expensive, and there was a lot of bad feeling amongst the locals and all that.
CANE: The biggest problem has been the destruction of the dunes and that special scientific...
FRAYER: That's Jenny Turner, Dave Taylor and Chris Cane again. They say Trump's golf resort was supposed to bring more jobs than it did. And these dunes have since lost their special protected status because of damage from Trump's construction. I reach another local, a folk hero of sorts, by phone because he's stuck inside a security cordon.
DAVID MILNE: (Laughter) There's actually an Army radar truck at the bottom of my driveway.
FRAYER: David Milne refused to sell his property despite years of efforts by The Trump Organization.
MILNE: Oh, yes. We had Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer assistant on the doorstep numerous times. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were on the doorstep.
FRAYER: That was nearly 20 years ago. He says Trump ended up having to redesign his resort to circumvent the house.
MILNE: I mean, their clubhouse is about 100 feet below us. The first nine holes go south from there, but No. 10 through 18, they're right in front of us, just an artificial blot on the landscape.
FRAYER: But what Trump considers an artificial blot on the landscape...
And as the clouds sort of roll off these sand dunes and across the North Sea, I can see wind turbines emerge from the mist every so often.
Trump calls them windmills and considers them an eyesore, particularly from the 18th hole. Here he is with the British prime minister this weekend.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: When we go to Aberdeen, you'll see some of the ugliest windmills you've ever seen.
FRAYER: And that's another thing the locals here disagree with him on because while Trump calls the nearest city, Aberdeen, the oil capital of Europe, David Milne says...
MILNE: It's more like the energy capital of Europe because we are leading the transition. So as part of Aberdeen's forward thinking, they fit perfectly.
FRAYER: Why would anyone be upset about them, he asks.
Lauren Frayer, NPR News, on Scotland's northeast coast.
(SOUNDBITE OF MINUTEMEN'S "COHESION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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