Katharine Hay talks to residents and relatives of Donald Trump in Tong on the Isle of Lewis, where the mother of the Republican candidate, Mary Anne MacLeod, was from.
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00:00Hello from Tongue on the east side of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.
00:07Just in the run up to the US election, the Scotsman is going to be doing a series on Donald Trump and his connections to Scotland.
00:17The series will cover a range of different topics, but one of them is looking into the Scottish heritage of the aspiring president.
00:27So through that we thought we'd look at Marianne, his mother, who is from Scotland, who is from Tongue in Lewis, which is where I am just now.
00:35And so I just thought I'd come here to talk to people in the village just to hear what their memories are of Marianne Trump being here, visiting here.
00:45And just if anyone does follow and is interested in Donald Trump's campaign and whether or not they will support him in becoming the next president of the US.
00:56So I've just been to a coffee morning here in the Western Isles known as Soup and Pudding Day.
01:03And there are a lot of residents in the community centre, which you can see just behind me.
01:09Not many of them had much to say about Marianne growing up.
01:14A lot of them don't actually remember her all that well because some of the women I was talking to, their aunts or mothers went to school with Marianne.
01:24But they're just the next generation down. And they said that, unfortunately, a lot of the generation that Marianne was in have passed away now.
01:32So I just got little snapshots of memories of them when they were children.
01:38And Marianne, as a married woman living in the States, would come back over to Tongue with her husband.
01:45And the residents here were just telling me they remember sometimes on the holidays they'd see a huge car, the biggest car they'd ever seen on the island, turn up and take up the entire road and outward hop.
01:59Marianne Trump looking incredibly glamorous.
02:02They said her hair was always done in such an immaculate way.
02:06And just in comparison to theirs, they all felt that she was just stepping out of another life, really, which was the case.
02:14But in terms of Donald Trump and the current day and his campaign and looking to get the presidency again, I didn't really get much from the residents here.
02:26A lot of people say no one really talks about it all that much.
02:30And I went to one of the distant cousins' homes.
02:35And one cousin who would have been apparently happy to talk a bit about his view of Trump and his memories of Marianne, sadly, has developed a bit of a severe illness and isn't able to talk.
02:51But again, they also said to me that they just don't have any interest in speaking about it, whether or not they do behind closed doors.
02:59That's another question. But yeah, just also talking to other residents about the cousins who live here.
03:07They said that the cousins didn't even talk to them about their views on Trump.
03:11And they just don't really hint much at the connection either, just day to day walking past one another.
03:18It just doesn't come up in conversation.
03:20But still, yeah, interesting to come here and just hear a little bit about the memories that some of the people have of Marianne before she set off to America when she was quite young and came back on the occasional holiday to visit her own relatives.
03:38I also heard from one of the residents here that one of Donald Trump's siblings donated money to the care home, which allowed it to open up more space and more beds.
03:48So there's still a sort of connection to the place, to Tung, even though the impression I've got just in this current day, 2024, the links and the generation that sort of knew Marianne and perhaps had more stories about her growing up here have sadly passed away.
04:04But yeah, still interesting to just hear a little bit of what remains from people's memories of seeing her come to this village.
04:13But on the whole, Tung doesn't seem too invested in the movements of Donald Trump and what's going to happen next with his campaign.
04:23But anyway, either way, you can follow the stories that we're writing in this series on the Scotsman website and a piece about his heritage and his links to Scotland will be on there as well.
04:35So be on the Scotsman website if you're interested in reading a bit about Donald Trump's connection to Scotland.