David Coburn reaches out to Donald Trump in attempt to "mend bridges"

David Coburn has invited Donald Trump to meet with him during the US presidential candidate’s trip to Scotland.

With Trump currently visiting Scotland to open his new Ayrshire golf course, the leader of UKIP Scotland has reached out in an effort to “mend bridges”, adding that he would “like to whack a few balls around Turnberry with him”.

Speaking to Holyrood, Coburn said: “Donald Trump, it seems to me, is going to romp it if he stands against Hillary. I don’t think he is nearly as extreme as some people think he is. I don’t think he is as extreme as he thinks he is himself. You don’t get to make that sort of money by being stupid."

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He continued: “I think people have got to start mending bridges. I think it is always very silly to have a pop at one of our biggest trading partners in the way the amateurish and infantile student politics of Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson [have] – and all the rest of those characters – Kezia Dugdale and Willie Rennie, and especially Patrick Harvie. How they can diss somebody who has the potential to put a lot of investment into Scotland is insane. I don’t get that.

“We have to do a lot of business with Saudi Arabia, we have to do a lot of business with China, where they put people in football stadiums and blow their brains out and sell their organs for transplants or whatever. There are a lot of horrible people we have to do business with in this world, but the problem with most of these people in politics is they have never done any business in their lives and they don’t know what it’s like to do business abroad. They are just naive student politicians talking nonsense.”

Trump himself addressed the Brexit vote earlier today, saying “I think it's a great thing that's happened. It's an amazing vote, very historic.”

The comments mark a change in tone from the MEP, who described Trump’s rise as “scary” in an interview with Holyrood in March, adding: “He makes the film Doctor Strangelove seem like a documentary”.

But Coburn dismissed suggestions he had previously been concerned by the candidate’s views.

He said: “Well, I am concerned by most Americans, to be absolutely honest. What I can’t understand is how, out of 200 million people, they have such trouble finding candidates.

“I have friends who are perfectly capable of becoming President of the United States, and are extremely well qualified for the job, and I have always asked them, ‘why don’t you stand’, and they say, ‘well it’s impossible’, unless you are a Christian eunuch. If you have a normal or even a vaguely abnormal sex life then forget it, being President is not for you. Unfortunately that mitigates against a lot of decent people.”