On an island 4,100 miles away from the US, the 2016 presidential election has become a very contentious issue.
People from the Isle of Lewis, the birthplace of Donald Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, are reportedly sparring over whether they should be supporting Donald Trump in his bid for the US presidency.
One resident, Derick Mackenzie of Stornoway, an evangelical Christian, started a Facebook group, "The Isle of Lewis Supports Trump for President," in July 2015, shortly after Trump announced his campaign.
While the page only has 74 fans to date, it posts very frequently and has evidently angered some other Isle of Lewis residents, who in turn started their own Facebook page, “Isle of Lewis DOES NOT Support Trump for President.”
That page, which started on March 26, already has 626 fans, indicating that there may be more Leodhasachs (people from Lewis), against Trump than for him. Though, to be fair, the Isle of Lewis, which is one of the outer Hebrides, has a population of 18,500.
Trump last visited Tong, the town on the Isle of Lewis where he still has relatives, in 2008. In previous interviews, he has said that he previously visited the Isle of Lewis when he was a small child.
Mary-Anne Macleod was born in Tong in 1912. During a visit to New York as a young woman, she met Fred Trump and then later moved to the US to be with him.
Trump supporter Mackenzie, 51, a father of five, told the Scottish Daily Mail “A lot of people claim to be ashamed that Donald Trump has links to Lewis because of the way he talks. But they are not thinking it out, they don’t want to know what he truly stands for.”
He said that he started his controversial Facebook page to “show how I felt and hoped others would feel the same too. It’s all about honesty, I think he’s an honest man. I did not even know there was an anti-Trump Facebook page until my daughter told me. I will not be taking mine down.”
Mackenzie added that he thinks Trump’s approach to politics is “very much a Lewis approach in style. He is not intimidated by what people say.”
On the anti-Trump page, Facebook user Vera Masson wrote, “God help us if he ever gets to be President, the man is as mad as a Hatter and he would have his finger on the codes for Trident and he is stupid enough to use them, He is a real warmonger...”
In the midst of many negative comments, the page administrator did note “This page was set up as, if anything, a bit of a laugh between myself and some like-minded friends who do not feel that the Trump support page had any right to speak for the Isle of Lewis as a whole.......that's it, just a bit of fun!!”
Trump has also visited Scotland in recent years on business in connection with his golf course in Aberdeen.
*Originally published in April 2016.
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