Donald Trump's cousin reveals what he was like in 97-second visit to ancestral home

A relative of has spoken out about the president-elect and his mother’s roots growing up on a remote Scottish island.

Mary Anne MacLeod, Trump's mother, left her family home on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in the 1930s in search of a better life.

The enterprising Scotswoman arrived in on the day after her 18th birthday - the passenger list on the RMS Transylvania lists her profession as “domestic worker”.

After several years working as a domestic servant Mary met Fred Trump at a party and the pair married in 1936. It wasn’t long before she was moving up in the , with a servant of her own and a Rolls Royce with her initials MMT, for Mary MacLeod Trump, on the licence plate.

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However while this was the glittering New York world which was born into in 1946, his mother never lost contact with her Hebridian roots and returned often to visit the island of her birth.

The president-elect still has several relatives that live on the island, some of them still life in the house where Trump’s mother spent the first 18 years of her life.

Alasdair Murray, a cousin of Donald Trump, explained that Mary was one of seven sisters, all of whom emigrated save one, Alasdair’s mother Annie, whose children stayed around the stone croft house where the family had lived for generations.

Murray told the that Mary Anne, who died in 2000, "was a lovely person". He added: "Deep down, I'm sure he [Donald] is as well. [His mother] was just like the locals here. She still spoke the Gaelic. She spoke Gaelic as well as the day she left here."

Trump visited the island just once, in 2008 after his sister convinced him to stop over on his way to view land he had purchased in Aberdeenshire to build a course. Maryanne Trump-Barry, a federal judge who died in 2023, convinced Donald to visit his mother’s former home.

Trump’s visit to the family home was timed at 97 seconds, before rushing off for a press conference in nearby Stornoway. Murray said: "For all the time I spoke to him, he was all right, he was nice enough."

Thousands of Scots emigrated from the Western Isles in the 1930s and looking for a better life in America and Canada after the First World War. Boats went from Stornoway to North America and the trip took two weeks.

The Rev James Maciver, of Tong, told the paper there had always been a “general gladness” that Mary had done well. "She left the island in very difficult circumstances and did well in marrying Fred Trump,” he added.