Donald Trump hits back at Alex Salmond over LBC comments

Alex Salmond takes part in his first live weekly phone-in on news talk radio station LBC. Picture: PA

On his first appearance as a host on LBC radio yesterday afternoon, Salmond accused the US presidential hopeful of wearing a toupee and called on him to give up his ownership of Turnberry golf course.

Mr Salmond could not resist continuing his very public spat with US tycoon Mr Trump.

The SNP’s spokesman on foreign affairs talked of his meetings with Mr Trump and joked that he was unable to offer listeners any “inside information” on his “toupee”.

Donald Trump responded today with the following statement:

“This was the genius that destroyed big sections of the Scottish landscape with ugly , money-sucking, bird-killing industrial windmills, with oil now down at an all time low, and taxed at an all time high to pay for these monstrosities. Additionally, and disgracefully, this is the man who freed, on humane grounds, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi because he wanted to be so kind-hearted to a terrorist who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

“Salmond released him early so that he could die peacefully the next week, instead he lived for three years and would have lived for longer except for the conflict in Libya. Megrahi and others were laughing out loud at what a stupid man Alex Salmond is. Why would a terrorist that blew up an airliner with so many lives lost be released under any circumstances?!

Alex Salmond is an embarrassment to Scotland.”

But while Mr Salmond was prepared to have a go at one global businessman and owner of the controversial golf course at Menie in Aberdeenshire, he was keener to keep in with another – Rupert Murdoch, who recently became engaged to Jerry Hall.

Mr Salmond confided to listeners he hoped to be invited to the wedding when the Australian media mogul goes down the aisle with the blonde Texan former supermodel.

“I’m hoping, you never know, I might get a wedding invitation,” he told a caller named Nick from Dundee, who was keen to quiz him on his relationship with Mr Murdoch.

Earlier Mr Salmond vented his spleen on the first caller –Paul from St Albans – who had dared ask him how many taxpayers there were in Scotland and if they would have been able to fill the financial hole caused by the disastrous fall in the oil price.

Mr Salmond replied that he didn’t “really want to insult...Scotland”, adding Scotland had one of the highest rates of women in work in Europe.

“So don’t start talking about Scotland from your position in St Albans as some poor wee place up north somewhere,” Mr Salmond snapped.

Concern over the price of oil, now about $30 a barrel, refused to go away when a listener from Scotland phoned in. Ian from Montrose asked how Scotland would have coped with the job losses had it voted for independence. Mr Salmond said the UK had taken £30 billion from the “Scottish North Sea” over the past three decades and said people in Scotland would think it was now “pay-back time”.

As England considers forsaking the British national anthem God Save the Queen for a distinctive English one, Mr Salmond made his opinion known. The hymn Jerusalem, he thought, was a “great song”.

“You know if I was voting for an English national anthem, I’d go for, I think Jerusalem, a William Blake masterpiece,” he said. He also expressed his dismay that Mr Trump now owned Turnberry, one of Scotland’s classic links courses which has been a regular on the Open Championship rota.

“Every time they don’t take the Open to Turnberry it costs the Scottish economy and Turnberry£100 million,” he said. “I think it would be a better thing for Scotland if it was not Trump Turnberry. I would like it to get back to just being Turnberry.”