A FORMER golf boss has told how he fell out with Donald Trump over his bid to seize Scots homes.
Neil Hobday, 66, said he told the tycoon he couldn’t force out locals so he could build a course on their land.
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The row came after Trump in 2009 — seven years before he became US president — revealed plans to snap up eight plots of land at Menie, Aberdeenshire.
Mr Hobday, his then project director, said: “It upset me that he had this very aggressive and hostile attitude to nice people living their lives in their homes.
“I was highly sympathetic. It was ludicrous to suggest that a private developer from America could force people to have their homes sold. In my phone call with Trump I was pretty emotive. I said, ‘You can’t do this anywhere, let alone here in Scotland.’”
New BBC podcast Trumped tells how the businessman asked council chiefs to use compulsory purchase powers to get the land.
Alex Salmond revealed Trump asked him about it. And he told him there was no chance.
The former First Minister said: “I can tell you in two words why it’s not going to work — Highland Clearances. Scots are incredibly sensitive about the idea of people being cleared off their property. The idea that any government I can think of would countenance such a thing was ludicrous.”
Mr Hobday walked away from the project in 2010 — two years before it opened.
A spokesman for Trump’s firm said: “Despite spiteful opposition, we delivered one of the greatest modern links golf courses of all time.”
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Last year, we told how Trump won a legal battle over the use of his name at his Scottish golf resorts.
The former US president’s representatives trademarked the name ‘Trump’ for a number of services linked to his businesses at Turnberry in Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire.
