Trump mixes foreign policy wins, golf while opening new Scotland course

President Donald Trump touted his foreign policy achievements while visiting his newest Scottish golf course on Tuesday, a day after appearing to break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance on food supply to Gaza. 

The president appeared before reporters at Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen, Scotland, where he and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, opened a new golf course on Tuesday. 

“I look forward to playing it today. We’ll play it very quickly. And then I go back to D.C., and we put out fires all over the world,” Trump said before cutting the ribbon opening the new course in the village of Balmedie on Scotland’s northern coast.

“We did one yesterday. You know, we stopped the war, but we stopped about five wars,” Trump said. “So that’s much more important than playing golf. As much as I like, it’s much more important.” 

“It’s going to be a special year, and it’s going to be a special decade. And we’re going to make all of our countries strong and great and really wonderful again,” Trump added. “And that’s happening, and it’s happening very fast.” 

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Amid U.S. pressure, Thailand and Cambodia reached a ceasefire agreement. The Trump administration has also claimed responsibility for stopping a nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan, averting conflict between Serbia and Kosovo and diffusing violence between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. Earlier this year, Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen agreed to a ceasefire following U.S.-U.K. strikes. 

In late June, Trump ordered U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and infrastructure, which he claimed ended the Israel-Iran conflict in just 12 days, preventing greater loss of life. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel pulled their negotiators from ceasefire talks in Doha, Qatar, last week. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Hamas did not appear to be “coordinated or acting in good faith” to reach an agreement to return the remaining hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel or to “create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.” 

As the opening ceremony closed Tuesday, a reporter shouted a question at Trump, asking what the president would say next to Netanyahu.

“We’re working together to try to get things straightened out for the world,” Trump said. 

Trump on Monday held a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at another of his golf courses, Trump Turnberry in Girvan, Scotland. When reporters asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s recent remarks about concerns of mass starvation in Gaza being overstated, he replied, “I don’t know. I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.”

President Donald Trump, seen with Donald Trump Jr., Sarah Malone and Eric Trump, during the opening ceremony for the Trump International Golf Links golf course, near Aberdeen, Scotland, Tuesday, July 29, 2025.  (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Trump has also insisted the U.S. did not receive enough credit for the aid already provided to Gaza, which Hamas terrorists control. 

The president is capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family’s luxury properties and playing golf. 

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Trump used his trip to meet with Starmer and reach a trade framework for tariffs between the U.S. and the European Union’s 27 member countries – though scores of key details remain to be hammered out.

“We just signed a very big deal, as you know, with the European Union, but also with the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom was a week before, and it’s a very big deal and a great deal for the country. And it’s a great deal for everybody,” Trump said Tuesday. 

Trump had invited Starmer, who famously does not golf, aboard Air Force One so that the prime minister could get a private tour of his Aberdeen properties before Tuesday’s ceremonial opening.

Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves. 

“These are very hard to build, and you won’t see them built anymore. You’ll probably never see another course built in the dunes, not dunes like this,” Trump said of the course on Tuesday. 

The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012.

President Donald Trump plays golf after attending the opening ceremony for Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen, Scotland Tuesday, July 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Trump honored Sarah Malone, the Executive Vice President of Trump International Golf Links Scotland, during Tuesday’s opening ceremony. Eric Trump said Malone “has truly become a member of our family” after 16 years overseeing the properties. 

The president’s late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s north and immigrated to New York. She died in 2000 at age 88.

“We love Scotland. You know, my mother was born here and she loved it. She would come back here religiously once a year during the summers with my sister Marianne, and sometimes my sister Elizabeth. But they would come here religiously,” Trump said Tuesday. “Stornoway. That’s serious Scotland, by the way.” 

The president also thanked his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who was on the new course with him Tuesday, for the work she did leading the Republican Party during the 2024 presidential election. 

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Trump’s assets are in a trust, and his sons are running the family business while he is in the White House. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.